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Since its founding in 1973, The Heritage Foundation has served as a research and educational institute -- a think tank -- whose mission is to formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defenseenThu, 24 May 2018 17:14:59 GMTvBulletin1http://www.szone.us/images/misc/rss.jpgSZONE.US Forums - The Heritage Foundationhttp://www.szone.us/
Finally, the NFL Makes the Right Callhttp://www.szone.us/showthread.php?t=150824&goto=newpost
Thu, 24 May 2018 09:53:32 GMTOn 05.23.18 02:06 PM posted by Genevieve Wood
The NFL took a big step this week in making football great again.
They announced that, starting this next football season, players and personnel coming onto the field will not be able to kneel or otherwise protest during the national anthem.
Now it’s true they said that players can stay back in the locker rooms. But you know what? That’s fine. If players want to stay there until it’s time to come onto the field and do what they’re actually paid to do—play football—that’s OK with me. And if too many players from your team decide to hang back in the locker room—well, you know what, there’s 31 other teams you can pick from.
Now we could all say the NFL should have come to this decision a little bit earlier, but the fact is they finally made the right call. I’m sure lower TV ratings and declining ticket sales helped them make their decision. But a win is a win. And at the end of the day, this is a win for football fans who want to...On 05.23.18 02:06 PM posted by Genevieve Wood

The NFL took a big step this week in making football great again.

They announced that, starting this next football season, players and personnel coming onto the field will not be able to kneel or otherwise protest during the national anthem.

Now it’s true they said that players can stay back in the locker rooms. But you know what? That’s fine. If players want to stay there until it’s time to come onto the field and do what they’re actually paid to do—play football—that’s OK with me. And if too many players from your team decide to hang back in the locker room—well, you know what, there’s 31 other teams you can pick from.

Now we could all say the NFL should have come to this decision a little bit earlier, but the fact is they finally made the right call. I’m sure lower TV ratings and declining ticket sales helped them make their decision. But a win is a win. And at the end of the day, this is a win for football fans who want to come watch a game, not political protests.

But more importantly, it’s a win for America. Because while we believe in freedom of speech, we should all respect the flag that represents that very right.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2018/05/...he-right-call/
]]>The Heritage Foundation@Heritagehttp://www.szone.us/showthread.php?t=150824States Are Offering Relief From Rising Health Care Costs. Here?s How Congress Can Helhttp://www.szone.us/showthread.php?t=150825&goto=newpost
Thu, 24 May 2018 09:53:32 GMTOn 05.23.18 02:04 PM posted by Robert Moffit
Middle-class Americans, stuck in Obamacare’s insurance “markets,” are desperate for relief from skyrocketing health insurance costs. Innovative state governors and legislators, as The Heritage Foundation has urged (https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/2018-01/HL1285.pdf), need Washington’s help to provide it.
Relief cannot come quickly enough. For 2019, insurance executives are saying that individual market premiums could increase by 30 percent (http://www.healthexec.com/topics/healthcare-economics-policy/insurance-leaders-warn-big-aca-premium-hikes-coming-2019) nationwide. In Maryland, for example, insurers are requesting state regulators to approve rate increases ranging (http://www.baltimoresun.com/health/bs-hs-insurance-rate-requests-20180507-story.html) from 18.5 to as much as 91.4 percent, though final rates are sure to be lower.
*The Cost Explosion*
This year, enrollees were hit with a 34 percent increase...On 05.23.18 02:04 PM posted by Robert Moffit

Middle-class Americans, stuck in Obamacare’s insurance “markets,” are desperate for relief from skyrocketing health insurance costs. Innovative state governors and legislators, as The Heritage Foundation has urged, need Washington’s help to provide it.

Relief cannot come quickly enough. For 2019, insurance executives are saying that individual market premiums could increase by 30 percent nationwide. In Maryland, for example, insurers are requesting state regulators to approve rate increases ranging from 18.5 to as much as 91.4 percent, though final rates are sure to be lower.

The Cost Explosion

This year, enrollees were hit with a 34 percent increase for the standard “silver plans” in the individual markets nationwide, with deductibles averaging over $4,000 for single persons and more than $8,000 for families.

The recent rate hikes continue a historical pattern. In 2014, the first full year of Obamacare’s implementation, rate shocks hit millions of Americans in the individual markets, in many cases more than doubling premiums. From 2013 to 2017, premiums increased by 105 percent.

Obamacare’s excessive federal regulations and subsidy structure have directly contributed to these explosive costs. True, generous taxpayer subsidies insulate low-income persons from the annual explosions in high costs, but taxpayer subsidies do not address the root causes of rising costs—they just paper them over, at taxpayer expense.

For millions of middle-class Americans stuck in Obamacare’s individual markets, the coverage is virtually useless, and there is growing evidence that more and more people are skipping medical appointments simply because they cannot afford them. In other words, under Obamacare, “junk” insurance is the new normal.

None of this was supposed to happen. When President Barack Obama was campaigning hard to enact the “Crown Jewel” of his domestic agenda, he repeatedly said that his reform proposal would result in a decline of health insurance costs for the “typical family” by $2,500 annually. In fact, the opposite occurred.

Temporary Relief

Short of repealing and replacing the Obamacare regulatory regime that contributes directly to artificially high health insurance costs in state markets, states can apply for Section 1332 waivers, available under current law, that exempt states from various Obamacare rules.

Such waivers would allow states to redeploy existing federal funding and redesign and manage their own health reinsurance programs, to offset the costs of high-risk enrollees, and thus stabilize their own health insurance markets.

For example, Alaska secured a 1332 waiver that enabled officials to redeploy federal subsidies and re-channel those funds into a risk pool for high-cost enrollees and thus stabilize its market. The result: Alaska reduced individual market premiums by a stunning 25 percent.

Likewise, Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin signed legislation to apply for a waiver to create a reinsurance program that would cover 80 percent of high-cost claims. Under the waiver, the state would use federal dollars to cover 75 percent of the cost and state taxpayers would fund the remainder. Wisconsin officials project a 13 percent premium reduction in 2019 and 12 percent in 2020.

Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland also recently signed bipartisan legislation authorizing a waiver and creating a reinsurance program. While Maryland would impose a small premium tax to finance its reinsurance program to finance high-cost claims, Maryland officials are hoping to cut individual market premiums “in half.”

State officials using these waivers from current law can stabilize their markets, reduce premiums, and provide relief to individuals and families currently entrapped in severely damaged individual and small group health insurance markets.

Diverse Conditions

State health insurance markets are radically diverse, and health care costs often vary sharply from state to state. Costs reflect the demographic profile of state populations, such as the ratio of younger to older enrollees, and the proportion of the healthy compared to unhealthy subscribers.

They also reflect the size and competitiveness of their hospital systems, the prevailing unit costs of medical goods and services, the reliance on advanced medical technologies, and the prevailing medical practice patterns, which often differ greatly from state to state.

Finally, health care costs and insurance premiums are also dependent upon the competitiveness of state health insurance markets, as well as the extent to which Medicare and Medicaid affect those markets, as well as the penetration of employer-sponsored health insurance.

Federal waivers and reinsurance initiatives are, however, only a partial answer to the multi-faceted crises in the various state health insurance markets. Under Obamacare, the elected representatives of the people of the states are still largely hamstrung in their efforts to secure market innovations, inasmuch as they still are little more than supplicants for federal regulatory relief.

Next Steps

This wide variety of circumstances is no prescription for centralized, standardized federal regulation and control. Congress should heed the consensus advice of a wide range of conservative health policy analysts and restore the primacy of state authority over health insurance markets.

Such a reform would be the first step in the larger task of expanding both individual choice and control over dollars and decisions in badly broken health care markets.

With a laser-like focus on making coverage more affordable, Congress should restore to the states their traditional authority to set the rules and regulations that they think best, given their particular circumstances, to reduce insurance costs. States should be free to authorize new and different health insurance benefit designs, risk pooling arrangements for enrollees with high costs, and pursue innovations in care delivery—without waiting for a permission slip from Washington.

Congress should also ensure that every state resident, including those eligible for public programs, have the right to enroll in a private plan, if and only if they wish to do so. Persons enrolled in public plans should be able to redirect the money used for their government coverage to fund the private health plan of their choice.

No government official should force poor persons to stay in a government health plan if they want something better, including better access to physicians, specialists, and the chance to secure superior medical outcomes.

Restoration of state authority over health insurance markets, however, is only a first step in a much bigger agenda for comprehensive health care reform. Future actions should focus on breaking down barriers to competition among providers, while reforming the unfair federal tax treatment of health insurance and providing middle-class Americans individual tax relief for the purchase of their coverage.

These reforms would expand personal choice and portability of coverage and restrain the growth in health care costs.

In the meantime, state legislators would be directly accountable to the people they serve for the health care policies they adopt, including their health insurance rules, their ability to control costs, and their progress in expanding coverage.

State officials would no longer be able to blame Democrats or Republicans in Washington for the spreading rash of nationwide health policy failures. Better yet, they would be able to take full credit for their health policy successes. That is the right reward for good government.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2018/05/...ress-can-help/
]]>The Heritage Foundation@Heritagehttp://www.szone.us/showthread.php?t=150825House-Passed Prison Reforms Would Help Strengthen Families and Communitieshttp://www.szone.us/showthread.php?t=150826&goto=newpost
Thu, 24 May 2018 09:53:32 GMTOn 05.23.18 01:53 PM posted by John G. Malcolm
The House passed a prison reform bill Tuesday overwhelmingly on a bipartisan vote of 360 to 59 (https://jeffries.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/jeffries-bipartisan-prison-reform-bill-advances-in-the-house-of-0).
Now, the Senate will consider the reforms—which, if enacted, would help individual inmates, their families, and communities; increase public safety; and reverse the trend of skyrocketing spending (https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/federal-prison-costs-skyrocketing-despite-shrinking-inmate-population) at the Bureau of Prisons.
The Formerly Incarcerated and Re-enter Society Transformed Safely Transitioning Every Person Act—aka the FIRST STEP Act (https://www.dailysignal.com/2018/05/14/congress-is-right-to-consider-prison-reform/) of 2018—would expand access in federal prisons to programs that are consistently evaluated for their ability to reduce the rate at which prisoners re-offend and return to prison, such as...On 05.23.18 01:53 PM posted by John G. Malcolm

The House passed a prison reform bill Tuesday overwhelmingly on a bipartisan vote of 360 to 59.

Now, the Senate will consider the reforms—which, if enacted, would help individual inmates, their families, and communities; increase public safety; and reverse the trend of skyrocketing spending at the Bureau of Prisons.

The Formerly Incarcerated and Re-enter Society Transformed Safely Transitioning Every Person Act—aka the FIRST STEP Act of 2018—would expand access in federal prisons to programs that are consistently evaluated for their ability to reduce the rate at which prisoners re-offend and return to prison, such as employment and parenting skills training and drug abuse treatment.

Today, nearly half of all federal inmates return to prison after they are released. This bill, aimed at changing the revolving-door narrative of prisons in ways that help ex-offenders become productive, law-abiding members of society, is well worth consideration by the Senate.

The bill would build into the federal prison-intake process an individualized assessment of each inmate’s needs and recidivism risk in order to match him or her to programs that would best address the factors that prompted that individual’s decision to commit a crime.

Anti-social impulses or relationships, lack of education or job skills, drug abuse, or mental health issues are some of the factors that can and should be addressed through productive activities within prison walls before inmates return to society.

The bill would reward those who successfully complete programs, and have not been convicted of a disqualifying offense, with earned time credits, allowing them to serve some portion of their sentence in home or community confinement—as long as they remain law-abiding.

President Donald Trump has supported prison reform since at least his first State of the Union address, building on both his economic prosperity and public safety agendas.

At a White House prison reform summit on May 18, Trump said that “[a]t the heart of our prison reform agenda is expanding prison work and the programs”—all designed and evaluated to reduce recidivism—“so that inmates can re-enter society with the skills to get a job.”

“Nobody wins when former prisoners fail to adjust to life outside, or worse, end up back behind bars. We want former inmates to find a path to success,” said Trump, “so they can support their families and support their communities.”

It is time that Congress expanded those programs by adopting best practices from both the state and federal levels.

In 2006, Texas lawmakers faced a choice—either stick with the status quo of incarceration trends and construct facilities to house 17,770 more prison beds by 2012, at a cost of $2 billion, or implement a nonpartisan reform package at a cost of about $250 million with the aim of stabilizing the prison population until at least 2011.

Texas chose the second option, and ended up increasing public safety while spending fewer taxpayer dollars. State crime rates dropped to historic lows. Arrest rates decreased. Six juvenile facilities and three prisons closed (with a fourth scheduled to close this summer).

Part of Texas’ success story involves expanded diversion programs for low-level, nonviolent offenders. But another part involves expanded prison programs, including substance-abuse counseling and mental health treatment.

In 2011, Georgia faced similar problems. Its adult prisons hit 107 percent of capacity, and more than a quarter of all inmates *were being reconvicted within three years of leaving prison (a rate that had held steady for a decade) at an annual cost of $1 billion.

During Georgia Gov.*Nathan Deal’s*second inaugural speech in 2015, he explained that “prisons have always been schools.”

“In the past,” he explained, “the inmates have learned how to become better criminals. Now, they are taking steps to earn diplomas and gain job skills that will lead to employment after they serve their sentences.”

Today, the vision of Georgia’s Department of Corrections is a cause for optimism: It is “a process of transition that should begin when the offender enters our system,” it says, adding that it “provides effective opportunities for offenders to achieve positive change and to be a more pro-social contributor to society.”

The department aims “[t]o build individual capacity of the offender to be a productive member of his/her family and community” and “[t]o enhance public safety by reducing recidivism among the formerly incarcerated population.”

Georgia is using prisons to protect the public not only “by operating secure and safe facilities,” but also by “reducing recidivism through effective programming, education, and health care.”

Trump was right to say, at the White House prison reform summit, that “[i]t is not merely a waste of money, but a waste of human capital … to put former inmates on public assistance instead of placing them into a steady job where they can pay taxes, contribute to their country, gain dignity and pride that comes with a career.”

Trump has pledged support for prison reform. The House has delivered a meaningful bill with overwhelming support. Now, it is the Senate’s turn to consider the proposal.

As Trump said, it is an opportunity to help “make our communities more secure … to make our country more prosperous,” and to “make America safer, and stronger, and greater.”

https://www.dailysignal.com/2018/05/...d-communities/
]]>The Heritage Foundation@Heritagehttp://www.szone.us/showthread.php?t=150826Sen. Ben Sasse: Trade Protectionism Won?t Make ?Communities Stable Again?http://www.szone.us/showthread.php?t=150829&goto=newpost
Thu, 24 May 2018 09:53:32 GMTOn 05.23.18 01:20 PM posted by Fred Lucas
A Republican senator said Wednesday that claims that trade protectionism would restore the social and economic fabric of America’s past are “cruel” and untrue.
“If protectionism could bring back neighborhoods and nuclear families and lifelong employment, it would be well worth discussing. A lot of people would reasonably embrace that against some of the benefits of free trade,” said Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb. “The problem is, none of that is going to happen. It is fundamentally cruel to lie to people and say, ‘By government policy, we are going to make your communities stable again.’”
Sasse spoke at a trade forum sponsored by the Washington Examiner and held at The Heritage Foundation, where he criticized President Donald Trump’s policy of promoting tariffs and defended the North American Free Trade Agreement, which the Trump administration is renegotiating.
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., who also spoke at the forum, was more on board with...On 05.23.18 01:20 PM posted by Fred Lucas

A Republican senator said Wednesday that claims that trade protectionism would restore the social and economic fabric of America’s past are “cruel” and untrue.

“If protectionism could bring back neighborhoods and nuclear families and lifelong employment, it would be well worth discussing. A lot of people would reasonably embrace that against some of the benefits of free trade,” said Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb. “The problem is, none of that is going to happen. It is fundamentally cruel to lie to people and say, ‘By government policy, we are going to make your communities stable again.’”

Sasse spoke at a trade forum sponsored by the Washington Examiner and held at The Heritage Foundation, where he criticized President Donald Trump’s policy of promoting tariffs and defended the North American Free Trade Agreement, which the Trump administration is renegotiating.

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., who also spoke at the forum, was more on board with Trump’s trade policies, but urged an even more aggressive stance.

Trump, a Republican, has taken stances often at odds with his party on trade issues in seeking to renegotiate NAFTA and in imposing tariffs on steel and aluminum imports.

As if to underscore the point, in remarks in Washington on Tuesday night, Trump referenced support for his trade stance from across the aisle—that of Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an independent who caucuses with Democrats.

“We got a lot of Bernie Sanders [voters] voting for us. Can you believe it? Mostly people that didn’t like getting ripped off on trade—Bernie Sanders voters. He was right about that. But he wasn’t able to do anything about it,” Trump said at an event sponsored by the Susan B. Anthony List, a pro-life group.

He later added, “And we are renegotiating trade deals to bring jobs and wealth back home to America, where they and it belongs, working hard on the trade deals.”

Sasse, who represents one of the largest agricultural-exports states in the country, said Nebraska went from being about 70 percent supportive of free trade when he was first elected in 2014 to being 70 percent against it today.

Sasse argued that technology and automation have had more to do with the diminishing number of manufacturing jobs than trade deals do.

In 1900, he said, 41 percent of the U.S. labor market was involved in agricultural production. Today, it’s less than 2 percent. In the mid-1950s, almost one-third of the American labor market worked in factories. Today, that figure is 7 percent, the Nebraska lawmaker added. Yet, the United States has more total output.

In a question-and-answer format with the Washington Examiner’s Tim Carney, Sasse conceded that China is engaged in unfair trade practices, but contends the best way to combat that is to approve the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade deal among 12 countries that President Barack Obama couldn’t push through.

“The single best thing we could do to push back on Chinese bad behavior, and there is lots of it, would be leading TPP,” Sasse said. “If the U.S. were leading a whole bunch of other nations in the Pacific that believed in the rule of law, believed in free markets, believed in transparency, believed in human rights, believed in open sea lanes, that’s the single worst thing that can happen to China.”

In defending NAFTA, Sasse seemed to take a shot at Trump’s claims of business acumen.

“Recently, someone at the top of the executive branch used the phrase, ‘NAFTA is the single worst deal in the history of the world, either political or economical [sic].’ That’s just nuts,” Sasse said. “At the end of the day, NAFTA has been unbelievably good for the U.S. and for Mexico and for Canada. Trade deals and real estate deals are not the same.”

Sasse emphasized several times that trade deals are “win-win” for all countries, “not a zero-sum game.”

Manchin disagreed, however, calling out what he regards as problems with NAFTA, and seeking more bilateral agreements, which have been a hallmark policy of the Trump administration.

“I believe we should have an agreement with Mexico, and we should have another with Canada,” the West Virginia lawmaker said. “To go 20 years or more without having a review is unbelievable. I also believe all trade agreements should have a five-year sunset review.”

Using a line similar to one used by Trump, Manchin said, “I’m open to free trading, as long as there is fair trading with it.”

However, he said there seems to be internal struggle on trade issues at the White House.

“The undecidedness right now, and the administration’s tugging and pulling at each other, is causing inaction, and inaction is causing us a lot of consternation in the marketplace,” said Manchin.

Carney asked whether that could be part of Trump’s flexible-dealmaker approach to trade.

“Not if your rhetoric for the last year [is] ‘We got screwed. These are the horrible trade deals,’” Manchin responded. “A lot of people bought into that. We got screwed, and they were horrible trade deals. Fix them. I know a lot of his staff is pushing back.”

Tariffs are not the answer for the Trump administration’s goal of reviving manufacturing, argued Tori K. Whiting, a trade economist with The Heritage Foundation, who spoke at another panel discussion as part of the event. She said she has talked to manufacturers facing tariff-induced higher prices and are looking at possible layoffs as a consequence.

“These are companies that use steel and aluminum. They are really hurting,” Whiting said. “Tax reform was supposed to help these companies. Deregulation was supposed to help these companies. But if they can’t get the products they need at good prices, at prices that are buyable for them, they can’t do business.”

https://www.dailysignal.com/2018/05/...-stable-again/
]]>The Heritage Foundation@Heritagehttp://www.szone.us/showthread.php?t=150829A Truce in the Trade War Is Good News. Trump Can Make It Better by Scrapping the Tarihttp://www.szone.us/showthread.php?t=150828&goto=newpost
Thu, 24 May 2018 09:53:32 GMTOn 05.23.18 01:40 PM posted by Tori Whiting
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced (https://insidetrade.com/daily-news/mnuchin-tariffs-chinese-products-put-hold-trade-war-averted) this week that the U.S. and China had agreed to cool down the brewing trade war, following a joint statement (https://insidetrade.com/sites/insidetrade.com/files/documents/2018/may/wto-05192018-china.pdf) from U.S. and Chinese officials. That’s a positive first step.
Mnuchin confirmed (http://video.foxnews.com/v/5787320881001/?#sp=show-clips) that the planned tariffs under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 on $150 billion of Chinese exports “are on hold,” a move that’s sure to ease uncertainty for U.S. manufacturers and agricultural producers.
Now that the administration has established what seems to be productive dialogue with China on bilateral trade concerns, it’s time for President Donald Trump to stop hurting American manufacturers—and our closest allies—with additional tariffs on steel...On 05.23.18 01:40 PM posted by Tori Whiting

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced this week that the U.S. and China had agreed to cool down the brewing trade war, following a joint statement from U.S. and Chinese officials. That’s a positive first step.

Mnuchin confirmed that the planned tariffs under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 on $150 billion of Chinese exports “are on hold,” a move that’s sure to ease uncertainty for U.S. manufacturers and agricultural producers.

Now that the administration has established what seems to be productive dialogue with China on bilateral trade concerns, it’s time for President Donald Trump to stop hurting American manufacturers—and our closest allies—with additional tariffs on steel and aluminum.

The administration argued that these tariffs, which were imposed on March 8 under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 on nearly all foreign exporters, were necessary to combat Chinese overcapacity.

Contrary to this claim, the majority of steel and aluminum is imported from U.S. allies. China accounts for only about 2 percent of all U.S. steel imports and roughly 7 percent of all U.S. aluminum imports.

Owing to the global nature of the steel and aluminum tariffs, domestic prices have become increasingly volatile, spiking by as much as 40 percent in just a few months.

Higher prices are causing a quick ripple of negative effects throughout the domestic economy. The Department of Commerce has received more than 8,000 requests for product exemptions from domestic companies, and that number continues to grow each day.

The sheer volume of exemption requests alone proves that imposing such broad tariffs was a mistake.

On June 1, country exemptions for Canada, Mexico, and the European Union will expire, and it’s unclear if preliminary agreements in principle with Australia, Argentina, and Brazil will be finalized by this time.

American users of steel and aluminum do not need another month’s extension on country exemptions or swifter processing of the thousands of product-exemption requests. These manufacturers need real relief from government intervention.

Before the June 1 deadline, Trump should announce a full removal of tariffs imposed under Section 232, and any country exemption agreements already in effect should be nullified.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2018/05/...g-the-tariffs/
]]>The Heritage Foundation@Heritagehttp://www.szone.us/showthread.php?t=150828A 30-Year-Old Man Won?t Leave His Parents? House. In Some Areas He Could Get Food Stahttp://www.szone.us/showthread.php?t=150827&goto=newpost
Thu, 24 May 2018 09:53:32 GMTOn 05.23.18 01:40 PM posted by Jamie Bryan Hall
By now, you’ve likely heard the story of Michael Rotondo, a 30-year-old college dropout from Camillus, New York, who refused to move out of his parents’ house.
For months, they have encouraged him to find a job and have offered to help him find a place to live on his own. “There are jobs available even for those with a poor work history like you. Get one—you have to work!” one of their notes to him said. But he has refused to budge.
They served him an eviction notice in February and eventually took him to court. State Supreme Court Justice Donald Greenwood rightly ruled in the parents’ favor on Tuesday, and while Rotondo called the decision “outrageous” and has vowed to appeal, it would be wise for him to begin searching for his next home.
The story of a work-capable young adult mooching off of his parents has become all too common, and unfortunately, many of these people are allowed to mooch off of taxpayers, as well.On 05.23.18 01:40 PM posted by Jamie Bryan Hall

By now, you’ve likely heard the story of Michael Rotondo, a 30-year-old college dropout from Camillus, New York, who refused to move out of his parents’ house.

For months, they have encouraged him to find a job and have offered to help him find a place to live on his own. “There are jobs available even for those with a poor work history like you. Get one—you have to work!” one of their notes to him said. But he has refused to budge.

They served him an eviction notice in February and eventually took him to court. State Supreme Court Justice Donald Greenwood rightly ruled in the parents’ favor on Tuesday, and while Rotondo called the decision “outrageous” and has vowed to appeal, it would be wise for him to begin searching for his next home.

The story of a work-capable young adult mooching off of his parents has become all too common, and unfortunately, many of these people are allowed to mooch off of taxpayers, as well.

Consider the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (aka the food stamp program), which currently pays benefits of up to $192 per month to an estimated 5.4 million able-bodied adults without dependents (“ABAWDs” in Agriculture Department-speak).

While the program, on its face, requires that such an individual work at least 20 hours per week or engage in a job search or training—or at least volunteer in order to receive benefits—federal law provides that states may request that these work requirements be waived for all individuals who reside in any “area” that “does not have a sufficient number of jobs.”

That has been interpreted through regulations to mean an unemployment rate as low as 20 percent above the national average. With the U.S. jobless rate at an 18-year low of 3.9 percent, an area with an unemployment rate of 4.7 percent could qualify.

One such area is the city of Syracuse, a 4.8-mile drive east of Mark and Christina Rotondo’s home in Onondaga County. Its latest unemployment rate is 6.2 percent, in line with the national average for the past 50 years, but not a single one of its residents would be expected even to look for work, much less put in 40 hours per week, in order to qualify for SNAP benefits.

If Michael Rotondo finds a place to live there, he can rest assured that he will be able to continue his unspecified “successful” business, which he has called “the overwhelmingly superior choice for the economic well-being over the working of a full-time job,” without actually having to work for his food—all thanks to U.S. taxpayers.

The recent debate on the farm bill in the House has focused primarily on whether those responsible for the care of dependents below a certain age should be made subject to SNAP work requirements, largely ignoring the extent to which geographic-area waivers undermine the existing work requirements for able-bodied adults without dependents who have the least excuse not to work.

For example, my colleague Robert Rector and I found that the farm bill now before Congress, H.R. 2, as drafted, would allow 4.3 million of these able-bodied adults without any dependents to remain exempt from the work requirement. And, along with Mimi Teixeira, we laid out five specific steps Congress could take to encourage work in the food stamp program.

If Congress wants to get serious about encouraging those who can work to do so, it should start by ensuring that those living in places such as Syracuse are not exempted from work requirements during an economic boom.

That would ensure that someone like Rotondo can’t just move 5 miles to join them on the food stamp rolls.

In early May, President Donald Trump submitted a rescission request to Congress to roll back more than $15 billion in spending.

The House initially seemed poised to pass the package before Congress’ Memorial Day recess, but now, CQ reports that consideration of the package will be delayed until at least June.

Congress has less than a month to take up the rescissions package before the president’s request expires. Putting it off is a mistake. This request represents the very least Congress can do to try to pare back spending and return to some semblance of fiscal restraint.

Congress should take up the president’s rescission request this week and then work with him on additional requests that target the tens of billions of dollars in inappropriate discretionary spending increases, included in the 2018 omnibus appropriations bill.

House leadership indicates that the delay is due to a lack of available floor time, but a more likely cause is that there are not enough votes to pass the rescission request. Democrats and some Republicans in Congress have balked at the idea that the request would take back funding from the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and Ebola response, among others.

Despite the rhetoric, the rescissions package would have no impact on current CHIP funding. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said so itself. The $7 billion in proposed CHIP rescissions were authorized for 2017 only and Congress no longer has legal authority to spend those funds.

The real reason that some members of Congress don’t want to rescind the CHIP funding has nothing to do with the well-being of children—the CHIP funds under consideration are often never fully spent. Instead, Congress often rescinds these funds themselves through annual appropriations bills and then uses these phantom savings to pay for unrelated discretionary spending.

This is one of the most commonly used budget gimmicks, known as Changes in Mandatory Programs (CHIMPS). In the 2018 omnibus, Congress rescinded over $3.5 billion from CHIP and used that money for other spending. In total, the omnibus had over $17 billion in phony CHIMPS savings that were used to evade the already inflated budget caps.

Ebola response funds are another example of money that should be rescinded. The $252 million that Trump is seeking to rescind was originally provided by Congress in 2014 under the emergency funding designation.

Over two years ago, the World Health Organization declared that the disease was no longer a world health emergency. While the number of cases has increased over the past few months, it is far from the levels of a few years ago and does not warrant emergency funding at this time.

In reality, the current rescissions package currently is the absolute smallest step that Congress could take toward fiscal sanity. Rescissions have never served as a meaningful method for reducing the federal deficit.

The president’s own Office of Management and Budget estimates that this package would achieve only $3 billion in real savings over the next 10 years. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that it would save even less, at under $1.3 billion.

While rescissions may not be the sole answer to fixing the nation’s fiscal problems, every journey starts with a small step. The president’s rescissions package represents an opportunity for Congress to show that in light of recent spending increases, it still cares, at least in some small amount, about cutting spending and enacting fiscal restraint.

Congress should stop wasting time and adopt the president’s package this week. It should then work with the administration to pass more meaningful rescissions packages that target the bloated 2018 omnibus spending bill.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2018/05/...ds-to-act-now/
]]>The Heritage Foundation@Heritagehttp://www.szone.us/showthread.php?t=150832?Amnesty First? Breaks Faith With the American Peoplehttp://www.szone.us/showthread.php?t=150831&goto=newpost
Thu, 24 May 2018 09:53:32 GMTOn 05.23.18 01:05 PM posted by David Inserra
It’s being reported that House Republicans plan to vote on several immigration bills (https://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook/2018/05/18/house-immigration-votes-discharge-petition-271094) in June in order to head off a discharge petition by a group of party moderates that would force a vote on amnesty.
Those bills, as I noted (https://www.dailysignal.com/2018/05/21/republicans-flirt-with-amnesty-yet-again-ignoring-long-needed-reforms/) previously, are in fact amnesty bills.
And as is generally the case with amnesty bills, these proposals are growing more and more unfair not just to American citizens, but to legal immigrants.
Amnesty rewards those who have broken the law with citizenship, a precious thing in a republic, while millions of legal immigrants have waited—and are waiting—to come to the U.S. the right way.On 05.23.18 01:05 PM posted by David Inserra

It’s being reported that House Republicans plan to vote on several immigration bills in June in order to head off a discharge petition by a group of party moderates that would force a vote on amnesty.

Americans who break the law can and do lose their freedom and often forfeit some of their rights. And yet, aliens who illegally enter the U.S. are rewarded with additional rights and benefits, such as the ability to work in the U.S.

How is that fair to American citizens?

At the core of this unfairness is the breakdown of the rule of law, which is—or should be—a central tenet of modern liberal societies. Government should apply the laws fairly and equally to all people. It doesn’t play favorites and ignore the laws for some people or groups while enforcing them against others.

That’s a huge problem with legislative amnesties, as well as with executive policies, such as the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which never should have existed in the first place.

That’s because DACA is unlawful and unconstitutional, based on the ruling of the appellate court against the similar Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents program.

To put this in context: Liberals value all sorts of laws regarding the environment. If the government allowed environmental laws to be broken without punishment, and then wanted to give an amnesty to those companies breaking the laws, those on the left would be angry—and rightly so.

No one likes it when laws they care about are broken and when those responsible are given a “get out of jail free” card.

As such, Congress should put the needs and interests of American citizens, as well as those of legal immigrants, before those of illegal aliens.

Congress should first improve border security, enhance enforcement of our immigration laws, and move our legal immigration system toward one that is merit-based. It owes the American people at least that much.

“When I ran for office, I pledged to stand for life. And as president, that’s exactly what I’ve done,” says President Donald Trump. Mallory Quigley of the pro-life organization Susan B. Anthony List joins us to discuss Trump’s record on life. Plus: A Yale student wrote an op-ed explaining how being in foster care made him a conservative.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, says students from the high school near Houston where the deadly shooting occurred told him they don’t believe more gun control is the way to make schools safer.

In an interview in his Senate office Tuesday with The Daily Signal, Cruz said support for the Second Amendment in Texas is why CNN and other media outlets aren’t giving these students the kind of wall-to-wall coverage that followed the school shooting in Parkland, Florida.*

Cruz also talked about why the Senate should work full workweeks and potentially skip the August recess to get more done. From making tax reformfor individuals and small businesses permanent to repealing Obamacare’s employer mandate, the Texas senator said plenty of legislative priorities could be passed with a simple majority and Republicans should take advantage of the relatively rare opportunity of being in charge in Washington.

Cruz also applauded President Donald Trump both for listening to many views and for standing up to much of official Washington and fulfilling his promises to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and get America out of the Iran nuclear deal.*

Watch the video of the full interview above. This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Genevieve Wood:Sen. Cruz, thank you for sitting down with The Daily Signal. We appreciate it.

Sen. Ted Cruz: Always glad to be with you.

Wood:Let’s start first with our home state of Texas. A tragedy happened last week at a high school in Santa Fe. What are you hearing from folks on the ground there?

Cruz: The shooting Friday morning was just horrific. Santa Fe is a town that is about 30 miles outside of Houston, which is my hometown, about 30 minutes from my house. I was at home Friday morning when the shooting occurred, and I spent the entire day in Santa Fe.

At this point, we know that this deranged gunman, this young man who was a student at the school, he came in at 7:30 in the morning with a shotgun and revolver, and he murdered 10 people—eight students and two teachers. He injured an additional 13.

It was truly horrific. I spent a great deal of time with law enforcement officers, teachers, with parents, with students. The shock and trauma, it’s powerful. I went to the hospital and visited with some of the students who had been wounded.

I remember one particular hospital room, where there was a young man named Clayton who had been shot in the leg and he’d been shot in the arm. He’d just come out of surgery and he was conscious and in good spirits. Clayton is a bull rider and also a pole vaulter. I asked him what his best height was, and he said 13 and a half feet.

It was his left elbow that had been shot pretty badly. He had pins all up and down his left arm. I asked him, “Are you a lefty or are you a righty?” He said, “I’m a lefty.” He just smiled and said, “But I’ll learn to ride bulls with my right hand.”

Wood: Great spirit.

Cruz: It was that kind of—even in the face of horror—that spirit of hope and optimism. Probably a dozen students were there in that hospital room visiting Clayton, most of whom had been at the school. The agony the parents went through, I mean, that’s every parent’s nightmare. You send your daughter, your son off to school that morning, and they never come home.

Wood: Many parents, obviously in Texas but across the country, are asking, “Should I be worried about any of this?” Where does this move us in the whole issue addressing school safety?

Cruz: Well, listen. There have been too dang many of these. We’ve seen them over and over again, whether Santa Fe, or Parkland, or just six months ago in Texas, Sutherland Springs, the worst church shooting in the history of our country. I’ve too many times gone and cried with and held and comforted and prayed with the victims of these shootings.

Something’s wrong. When we were kids, this wasn’t a part of going to school. You might worry about getting a black eye at school or something, but you didn’t worry about someone, some lunatic coming in and shooting and murdering as many people as they could. That was not part of school.

Wood: And you have a lot of folks saying mental health problems here are an issue, and violence we see in video games and movies and all the like. But so, what do we do about that?

Cruz: I think there’s a lot we can do about it. You can focus on schools, but you can focus on also gun violence more generally. On schools, it was interesting: We’re in that hospital visiting with those students. I was there with the governor of Texas [Republican Greg Abbott], the two of us were there. We asked: “What’s the answer? What should we do?” And then we just shut up, we just listened.

And it was really striking. Out of a dozen students who just hours earlier had been in this shooting, every one of them said the answer is not gun control. They said, don’t take our guns. They said if you take our guns, it won’t make us safer, it will just mean the killers and murderers have guns.

A lot of the students there said, “Well, maybe more metal detectors in schools. Maybe more armed police officers in schools, so that you’re able to stop something like this when it happens.” Several of the students brought up that they thought teachers should be able to be armed.

One student who was there, he was in the adjoining classroom … he said his teacher was a former Marine, who was trained to handle a firearm, obviously, in the Marines. He said he wished his teacher had been armed; he might have been able to stop the killer before he killed so many people.

Those are the ideas that the students were suggesting.*Now I will say, it’s fairly striking that, you look at the mainstream media, CNN, after the Parkland shooting, it was round-the-clock coverage of the students calling for aggressive gun control because that happens to be the political agenda of most of the media. In this case, where the students aren’t calling for that, suddenly … the media isn’t interested in covering it.

Wood: They’re not as interested. And you know, this is so much of a local issue, a state issue. But is there something at the federal level that …

Cruz: There’s a lot that can be done and should be done. Just a couple of months ago, in the federal budget deal, we included $2.5 billion of funding that could be spent on school safety, could be spent on things like metal detectors and police officers.

Things like examining the footprint of a school and reducing the number of entrances and exits, so that you don’t have—this shooter came in essentially a back door of an annex, where the art [class] was. If you had just one or two entrances where you had metal detectors and armed guards …

Wood: The way you have in this building [the Dirksen Senate Office Building].

Cruz: The way you have—

Wood: Several entrances were closed when we tried to enter here today.

Cruz: In this building … there are a ton of buildings where [you have] one or two entrances, and you have a security point to keep people safe. I think that’s something that should be examined closely.

I also think that there’s a lot more we can do going after violent criminals. Inevitably, people say, “We’ve got to do something.” That’s right, we do have to do something. But we need to do something that works. The proposals from Democrats, of taking away the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens, they don’t work. They’re not effective in reducing violent crime.

If you look at the jurisdictions across the country with the strictest gun control, almost inevitably they have among the highest crime rates, the highest murder rates. It’s actually what the students told me on Friday is true, that when you disarm the law-abiding citizens, then it means the criminals are the ones that have guns.

If you want to stop these kinds of crimes, there are things we can do. In 2013, I introduced legislation along with Chuck Grassley from Iowa, it was called the Grassley-Cruz legislation. It targets violent criminals. On the school safety front, it provided $300 million in additional school safety funding, funding that maybe could have made a difference preventing Parkland, preventing Santa Fe, if there were additional officers there.

Sadly, Grassley-Cruz, the Democrats filibustered it. They didn’t allow it to pass into law. We’ve got a majority of senators voted for Grassley-Cruz, but the Senate Democrats, [then-Minority Leader] Harry Reid and the Democrats demanded 60 votes and they killed it.

But not only that, Grassley-Cruz focused on the bad guys. If you look at Sutherland Springs, it was already contrary to federal law for that gunman to have a firearm. He had a felony conviction, a domestic violence conviction. But the Obama administration never reported his conviction to the background check database, so it was never in the database.

Grassley-Cruz required an audit to make sure that every conviction is in that database, so the database doesn’t have holes. And it required the Department of Justice to prosecute felons and fugitives who tried to illegally buy firearms.

What that means is, if Grassley-Cruz had passed into law, if the Democrats hadn’t filibustered it, the shooter at Sutherland Springs, when he tried to illegally buy that gun, he would’ve been arrested, he would have been prosecuted, and he would have been in federal jail instead of murdering innocent men, women, and children at that beautiful church in central Texas.

Wood: Would you consider reintroducing Grassley-Cruz? Is that something that could come back?

Cruz: It is, and I have reintroduced it. I’m pressing for it. Let’s take it up for a vote. Let’s pass it into law. Let’s focus on what actually works. The odd thing is, the media and many Senate Democrats, they aren’t interested in what works to reduce crime.

Sutherland Springs is another shooting they never like to talk about, because what stopped that shooting was another citizen. Stephen Willeford, law-abiding citizen, lived a block away from the church, who heard about it, ran over barefoot with his AR-15 and engaged the gunman. And ultimately saved many, many lives. Far too often what stops a bad person is a good person with a gun.

But that’s not what the media wants. They want to ban firearms for law-abiding citizens. If you want to stop violent crime, focus on the criminals. That’s something I’ve led the effort to do in the Senate. That’s something I’m going to continue leading the effort on.

Wood: You also have teamed up with some other senators who recently said there are a number of things that we need to do instead that aren’t getting done. I think you sided with maybe 16 other senators that sent a letter … to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell saying, “Why don’t we work on Monday and Fridays? Why don’t we cancel the August recess?” Not only so you can getmore nominations through, but we don’t end up against the clock on funding the government bill. Where are you on that? Do you think the majority leader is going to agree?

Cruz: You know, I hope so. But we’ll see. We need to get—

Wood: Why is it so important? Why are things so jammed here?

Cruz: We need to get more done. And we need to take advantage of the opportunity we have. A few weeks ago, I did a presentation to the Senate Republican Conference. I was walking through an elaborate PowerPoint where I said in the last 100 years, we have had unified Republican control of the federal government—Republican House, Senate, and White House—four times, in 100 years. Since World War II, it’s only been a total of eight years that we’ve had unified Republican control. History teaches us this is rare.

This is an unusual opportunity. In my view, we shouldn’t waste a second. We should be working every minute of every hour of every day as long as the voters entrust us with unified control.

Now listen, in the last year and a half, I think we’ve gotten a great deal done. A great deal done that the media never talks about. They’re obsessed with whatever the latest porn star eruption is. I have to say, in Texas nobody cares about that.

If you look at what we’ve gotten accomplished: historic tax cuts, major regulatory reform, lifting job-killing regulations from small businesses and job creators, repealing the Obamacare individual mandate, which is real tax relief to the 6 and a half million Americans who are fined every year by the IRS because they can’t afford health insurance, confirming a record number of constitutionalist judges. All of those are critically important.

We’ve gotten those accomplished, but what I’ve been urging our leadership and my colleagues to do is let’s keep working and delivering. That means, let’s not take recesses, let’s not take vacations. Right now, the Senate typically works a three- to four-day week.

We’re facing historic Democratic obstruction, filibusters. The mantra of the Democrats—they’re listening to their extreme left wing—is fight, obstruct, resist. Resist is what they say over and over again.

Wood: So you don’t think they want to get anything passed?

Cruz: They want nothing. The Democrats’ position right now is “Hell, no.” On everything. They’re captive to the far left wing of their party. That can’t be an excuse for us not to deliver on the promises we made to the voters.

Wood: And as you all have said, we really want to make sure we don’t come up against the clock in September on spending, we want to get more nominations through. Democrats are also blaming Republicans right now for an increase in health care premiums. Is there a chance in your view to go back and revisit complete repeal of Obamacare between now and November?

Cruz:* Absolutely. What I did in the presentation to the Republican conference, I walked through probably 30 or 40 bills that different Republican senators had introduced, all across the conference, all sorts of different senators.

I said, look, these are all bills that I think have a real shot at getting 50 votes, at unifying the Republican conference, that will deliver real results. They run the gamut, from things like, on tax reform, making the individual tax cuts permanent, making small business tax cuts permanent, making [business] expensing permanent.

On Obamacare, there are a lot of things that could easily get 50 votes in the Republican conference. Ending the employer mandate, which would be an enormous benefit to jobs and small businesses. Expanding health savings accounts. Letting people who use health savings accounts to pay for premiums. That would effectively reduce premiums 20 to 30 percent like that. Codifying association health plans and short-term limited duration plans, which gives consumers more choices and drives down the cost of health care.

All of those are things we could do. Regulatory reform, codifying the REINS Act that says any economic regulation that imposes $100 million in cost to the economy or more can’t go into effect without an affirmative up-down vote from Congress. Enormously impactful.

What I urged my colleagues to do is, if you look at almost everything we got accomplished last year, we did it through legislative vehicles that only take 50 votes, that can’t be filibustered. So what I encouraged everyone, let’s decide what we want to accomplish as a conference in the next eight months and then let’s take up legislative votes that the Democrats can’t filibuster.

We know they’re going to obstruct. So let’s actually fight to win. Let’s have a strategy of here’s what we want to go to the American people saying, we promised you we would deliver and we did. Here’s our strategy to get it through in the face of Democratic obstruction.

I think there are a lot of members who agree with me on this. This is an active debate within the conference. I hope we’ll follow through and step up.

Wood: We’ll be watching to see. Final question. On the international front, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gave a big speech this week on what’s next after the Iran deal. One of the things he talked about was the administration believes this probably ought to be a treaty if we’re going to move forward with something. Is that something you think the Senate would take up?

Cruz: I absolutely believe that any deal with Iran should be a treaty. It should be confirmed by two-thirds of the Senate. One of the things that Barack Obama did with the Iran deal is he subverted the constitutional requirements for a treaty because he knew it couldn’t get confirmed.

Remember, the Obama Iran deal was opposed by a bipartisan majority of both houses of Congress. Not only couldn’t he get two-thirds to ratify it, he couldn’t get even a majority of either house.

Whether there’s a new Iran deal or not, I want to say that President Trump in the last two weeks has been incredibly consequential to foreign policy. Two events that occurred within days of each other. One was opening the American Embassy in Jerusalem.

Last Monday, I was in Jerusalem. It was the 70th anniversary of the creation of the modern state of Israel. It was truly a moment of history. When David Ben-Gurion formed the modern state of Israel, 11 minutes later President Harry Truman recognized Israel. America’s leadership with Israel has been powerful for the 70 years since then.

Presidents of both parties have promised they would move our American Embassy to Jerusalem. It’s the capital of Israel, it’s where the government is based, it’s where the Supreme Court [is], it’s where the Knesset is, it’s where the prime minister is, it’s where the president is. And yet, [U.S.] presidents of both parties have failed to follow through.

In the Trump administration, there was a big, active debate and argument about whether and when to move the embassy. The State Department and Defense Department both pressed back against moving the embassy. I was very, very active urging the president to do it and that this was the right thing to do.

Those within the administration who didn’t want the embassy moved, what they said is, “Look, we want to see peace in the Middle East. Moving the embassy makes that harder.” I’ll tell you what I told the president.

I said, listen, No. 1, the impediment to peace is not Israel. No one wants peace more than Israel. It is the Israeli babies that are being murdered. The impediment to peace is as long as the Palestinian leadership refuses to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state and embraces terrorism, I don’t believe there will be peace.

But what I also told the president is that whatever the chances are of peace, they are increased by moving the embassy. Why is that? Because although we can expect, and this did happen, that our Arab allies in the region would protest, we would see cries of dismay from Egypt and the Saudis, the Jordanians. They would have to, they would believe for domestic political reasons they would have to.

What I told the president is that I believe privately they would be incredibly relieved. Because what they would say is that a president strong enough to stand up to the criticism of the global media elite, to say to the world, “We stand by our friends and we stand up to our enemies,” is also a president strong enough to pull out of Obama’s Iranian nuclear deal. For our Arab allies, they recognize that a nuclear Iran is the greatest threat to our security, to their security, to Israel’s security.

So on Monday [May 14], we finally opened that embassy. It was a piece of history. I was there for it. There’s no way I was going to be anywhere else but right there in Jerusalem.

Also, within days [on May 8], the president did the right thing, pulled out of the Iran deal. There was the exact same debate within the administration. The same forces that didn’t want to move the embassy didn’t want to end the Iran deal. Once again, I spent a great deal of time urging the president, this is the right thing to do.

I’ll tell you, I was sitting in the Oval Office with President Trump and with [national security adviser] John Bolton 30 minutes before the Iran speech pulling out of [the nuclear deal] and helping, working with them on that speech.

It’s the right thing to do because the Obama Iran deal sent billions of dollars to the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. It put Iran on an inevitable path to acquire nuclear weapons. The Ayatollah [Ruhollah]*Khomeini, when he chants, “Death to Israel” and “Death to America,” I believe him.

What I urged the president to do and what he’s done, and what Secretary Pompeo’s speech said, is under no circumstances ever will the Ayatollah Khomeini be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons. That’s what the position of the United States should be, and I’m very gratified that’s the position the administration is taking.

Wood: Final question for you. As you saw him walk through that decision-making process … President Trump, how does he make these decisions? Why do you think he came down the way he did?

Cruz: Listen, on a great many of these issues, you’ve got multiple voices. You’ve got voices within the Cabinet. You’ve got voices in the business community. You’ve got the media pushing you. I can tell you, I think he hears all of them.

Wood: He just met with the French president [who supports the Iran deal].

Cruz:*He did. President [Emmanuel] Macron. And also all of the European leaders were pressing him to remain in the deal. I will say … my office is speaking with the White House every day, and sometimes every hour.

Really, the two things that are consuming my time in the Senate are, No. 1, doing everything I can to encourage the president, encourage the administration on a positive direction, not a negative direction. No. 2, doing everything that I can to bring Republicans together in the Senate to deliver on our promises, not to waste this unique opportunity.

I’ve been very, very pleased that—there’s a lot of chaos, it’s the political circus, it’s insane. In Washington, the media are consumed with the scandal of the day. My approach when I walk down the hallways in the Capitol and the reporters start asking questions, I say, you know what? I don’t comment on tweets, I won’t comment on the random comment of the day.

If you want to talk substance, you want to talk policy, you want to talk tax reform, reg reform, Obamacare, judges, you want to talk national security, Iran, Israel, North Korea, I’ll talk about any of those. But if you want to talk about whatever has the talking heads on cable lighting their hair on fire, I’ve got nothing to say.

I’m not going to defend the indefensible. But what Texans are interested in, they’re not interested in the latest clutch-my-pearls scandal in Washington. They’re interested in real results. More jobs, higher wages, more opportunity, protect our rights.

That’s my focus, and I’ve been very encouraged that the Trump administration, over and over again, the president has been willing to make the right decision after hearing counsel from a lot of people.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2018/05/...t-gun-control/
]]>The Heritage Foundation@Heritagehttp://www.szone.us/showthread.php?t=150833Federal Court Sides With Trans Student Barred From Preferred School Bathroomhttp://www.szone.us/showthread.php?t=150834&goto=newpost
Thu, 24 May 2018 09:53:32 GMTOn 05.23.18 10:43 AM posted by Kevin Daley
A federal judge in Newport News, Virginia, ruled Tuesday that federal law allows a transgender teenager to sue his school district for barring his access to the bathrooms of his preference.
Though the ruling is not a decision on the merits of the controversy, U.S. District Court Judge Arenda Wright Allen’s*decision (https://vo.heritage.org/documents/,DanaInfo=www.documentcloud.org,SSL+4481533-Order-Denying-Gloucester-County-School-Board-s.html)*is a boon to the LGBT community, as it found the transgender student is covered by federal civil rights law.
Image: http://dailysignal.com/wp-content/uploads/DCNF-Logo-300x100.png
The case was occasioned when Gavin Grimm, a student in the Gloucester County Public Schools, began using the men’s bathroom. Grimm, who is now 19 and has since graduated, was born female but identifies as male. Gloucester County schools require transgender students to use alternative bathrooms.On 05.23.18 10:43 AM posted by Kevin Daley

A federal judge in Newport News, Virginia, ruled Tuesday that federal law allows a transgender teenager to sue his school district for barring his access to the bathrooms of his preference.

Though the ruling is not a decision on the merits of the controversy, U.S. District Court Judge Arenda Wright Allen’s*decision*is a boon to the LGBT community, as it found the transgender student is covered by federal civil rights law.

The case was occasioned when Gavin Grimm, a student in the Gloucester County Public Schools, began using the men’s bathroom. Grimm, who is now 19 and has since graduated, was born female but identifies as male. Gloucester County schools require transgender students to use alternative bathrooms.

Grimm claims the district’s policy violates Title IX, which bans gender discrimination in education, and the Constitution’s equal protection clause. The Obama administration issued Title IX guidance requiring public schools to allow trans students access to bathrooms corresponding to their stated gender in May 2016.

The dispute reached the U.S. Supreme Court, but the justices ultimately dismissed the case when President Donald Trump’s administration rescinded the Obama-era guidance.

The decision endorses a relatively new civil rights theory arguing discrimination against trans people is already unlawful as a matter of federal law. Title IX and other federal statutes like the Civil Rights Act forbid discrimination on the basis of sex. Such discrimination includes gender stereotyping or discriminating against individuals for failing to conform to expectations about sex. The Supreme Court affirmed this reading of the law in a 1988 case,*Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins.

Since discrimination against LGBT groups arises from gender stereotyping—which is already unlawful—proponents of the theory say anti-trans discrimination in the workplace and in public schools is already illegal.

“After full consideration of the facts presented and the compelling scope of relevant legal analyses, the court concludes that Mr. Grimm has sufficiently pled a Title IX claim of sex discrimination under a gender stereotyping theory,” the judge wrote.

The court also found Grimm is protected by the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection. Laws that treat individuals differently on the basis of sex are subject to high judicial scrutiny and are only permissible if they serve an important government interest. The school board said its policy protects its interest in student bathroom privacy, but Allen disagreed.

“The policy was not substantially related to protecting other students’ privacy rights, because there were many other ways to protect privacy interests in a non-discriminatory and more effective manner than barring Mr. Grimm from using the boys’ restrooms,” Allen wrote. “The board’s argument that the policy did not discriminate against any one class of students is resoundingly unpersuasive.”

Speaking after the decision, Grimm said he felt relieved and vindicated.

“After fighting this policy since I was 15 years old, I finally have a court decision saying that what the Gloucester County School Board did to me was wrong and it was against the law,” he told reporters.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2018/05/...hool-bathroom/
]]>The Heritage Foundation@Heritagehttp://www.szone.us/showthread.php?t=150834Hungary’s Experiment Could Rebuild a Sense of Nation in Europehttp://www.szone.us/showthread.php?t=150835&goto=newpost
Thu, 24 May 2018 09:53:32 GMTOn 05.23.18 10:26 AM posted by Mike Gonzalez
Hungary’s maverick prime minister, Viktor Orban, is once again stirring the pot of goulash.
Four years ago, Orban gave his critics ammunition when he said (http://www.kormany.hu/en/the-prime-minister/the-prime-minister-s-speeches/prime-minister-viktor-orban-s-speech-at-the-25th-balvanyos-summer-free-university-and-student-camp) he was constructing an “illiberal democracy.” This month he doubled down, declaring (http://www.kormany.hu/en/the-prime-minister/news/viktor-orban-elected-as-prime-minister) liberal democracy dead and urging other European leaders to stop trying to revive the corpse.
Instead, Orban exhorted them to get busy invoking a new democracy based on Christian principles.
“Liberal democracy is no longer able to protect people’s dignity, provide freedom, guarantee physical security or maintain Christian culture,” he said in Hungary’s parliament earlier this month. “Some in Europe are still tinkering with it, because...On 05.23.18 10:26 AM posted by Mike Gonzalez

Hungary’s maverick prime minister, Viktor Orban, is once again stirring the pot of goulash.

Four years ago, Orban gave his critics ammunition when he said he was constructing an “illiberal democracy.” This month he doubled down, declaring liberal democracy dead and urging other European leaders to stop trying to revive the corpse.

Instead, Orban exhorted them to get busy invoking a new democracy based on Christian principles.

“Liberal democracy is no longer able to protect people’s dignity, provide freedom, guarantee physical security or maintain Christian culture,” he said in Hungary’s parliament earlier this month. “Some in Europe are still tinkering with it, because they believe that they can repair it, but they fail to understand that it is not the structure that is defective: The world has changed.”

The response, he added, is “to replace the shipwreck of liberal democracy by building 21st-century Christian democracy.”

For many reasons, Orban deserves our attention when he says his ambition—“now we want to hunt really big game” is precisely how he put it—is to change the course of Europe.

He is flushed with an electoral victory in which his party last month captured more votes than all of the opposition combined. He has defeated German Chancellor Angela Merkel on the important philosophical debate over immigration (Orban says it should be lowered). And he has vanquished the leftist billionaire George Soros, who just announced his nongovernmental organization is leaving Hungary.

Most importantly, the question of values is the fundamental issue confronting the Continent. Unlike the United States, modern European states are not founded upon creedal documents that lay out the constituting character and culture of the nation, and how to preserve them.

When “Europe” was more or less coterminous with “Christendom,” that text was the Bible. The culture that defined all the European nations—the paintings, the music, the festivals, the folk wisdom—was suffused with Christianity and its imagery. Greco-Judeo-Christian ethics bonded Portuguese and Finns in the absence of DNA or language links.

As Europe has de-Christianized, at best it has evolved into a values-free, empty husk. At worst it has become a supranational entity that pretends adherence to hate-speech codes, mandatory work rules, open borders, and coercion of everyone into publicly affirming lifestyles they find repugnant—all violations of different freedoms, and ironically of liberalism itself—now form “European values.”

Orban thumbs his nose at European Union pieties with gusto, which is why he can be forgiven if he uses provocative terms to attract attention to an important project.

But first it is important to note obvious downsides. Orban is no Thomas Jefferson, and his emphasis on ethnicity, not civic nationalism contained within borders, is sui generis.

If you believe that all men are created equal, are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and that governments are instituted “to secure these rights” and “the blessings of liberty,” then the type of state that Orban wants to build is likely not your bag.

He says he believes that Hungarians are exceptional innately, not as a result of national traits that are acquirable. “We are a unique species,” he said last week. “There is a world which we alone see.”

This Hungarian nation is not geographically defined within juridical and electoral boundaries. The Hungarian nation, Orban said four years ago, “sometimes coincides with the country’s borders, sometimes doesn’t.”

Most important, securing individuals’ liberties is most assuredly not the central purpose of the state he is busy creating. As he said, again, in the 2014 speech:

“The new state that we are constructing in Hungary is an illiberal state, a non-liberal state. It does not reject the fundamental principles of liberalism such as freedom, and I could list a few more, but it does not make this ideology the central element of state organization, but instead includes a different, special, national approach.” (Emphasis added.)

There is good reason why ethnic, rather than civic, nationalism gives us pause. Though ethnic nationalism is unassailable from a natural rights perspective, it does de-emphasize the individual’s agency by making citizenship (belonging) non-volitional.

All of this is less of an indictment of Orban than one would think, however. First, he’s building a state for Hungarians, not Americans—and we must remember that even though safeguarding freedom must be our central animating spirit, to do that, we too, must preserve America’s unique culture.

Also, Hungarians are more ethnically separate than***** most. They are descended from seven tribes that emerged out of Central Asia more than a millennium ago and settled eventually in the Carpathian Basin.

Surrounded by a sea of German and Slavic, they continue to speak a language that is Asian in origin, not European, and to have distinct foods and customs. They are highly homogenous at home, and have enclaves in neighboring countries who are still considered part of the “Hungarian nation.”

And Orban is not—with due respect to his critics—vowing to pursue his project by depriving Hungarians of their freedom or property. He really doesn’t have a beef with liberal democracy, if understood as a system of representative government where the rule of the majority is checked by constitutional guarantees for minority rights and checks and balances prevent tyranny. Though he does not make freedom “the central element” of his project, he does secure people’s rights. He’s not Putin, Castro, or Xi Jinping.

It is instructive that for Orban, the inflection point for systemic change was the 2008 financial crisis. What he saw, what many saw, was intellectual and financial elites, transnational in outlook, suffering less than their working-class compatriots. He is trying to reconstruct a sense of nation.

By attempting to reintroduce the Judeo-Christian ethic into a secularized Europe, Orban arguably is giving Europe a chance to do just that. Even if the ethnic model he and his electorate may be pursuing is irreplicable in America or most of Western Europe, the values model could have a lot to offer.***

Educrat (ED-yoo-krat): noun, usually pejorative. A government school official or administrator whose primary function is to spend tax dollars telling other parents what to do with their children.

Beltway education bureaucrats abhor families who choose to keep their kids out of public schools—unless it’s to grandstand over gun control.

Behold Arne Duncan, longtime pal of Barack Obama and former U.S. Department of Education secretary, who called last weekend for parents nationwide to withdraw students from classes “until gun laws [are] changed to keep them safe.”

Emotions are still raw after a teen shot 10 classmates and teachers to death in Texas last week. But Duncan has no excuse for his cynical, made-for-cable TV exploitation of the Santa Fe High School massacre. Existing state laws banning minors under 18 from purchasing or possessing guns didn’t stop the shooter. Neither did laws against possessing sawed-off shotguns or pipe bombs.

And contrary to hysterical early reports, the accused 17-year-old gunman did not use “assault rifles.” So a “common sense” ban on “assault weapons” would not have saved lives, either.

But effective solutions to maximize students’ safety and well-being seemingly aren’t Duncan’s goals. His mission is airtime. Publicity. Entertainment. Provocation for provocation’s sake. Show time—for the children, of course.

School boycotts are a “radical idea,” he admitted to MSNBC. “It’s controversial. It’s intentionally provocative.” Praising teacher walkouts and student protests, Duncan told The Atlantic he supported parent-initiated school shutdowns for gun control because “we are not protecting our kids … And the fact that we’re not doing that—we’re not willing to think radically enough to do it—I can’t stomach that.”

Ah, the royal, unstomachable “we.”

Here’s another thing I find hard to swallow: Education overlord Arne Duncan now championing the radical idea of parents exercising their autonomy to do what’s best for their children.

As Obama’s meddling power-hungry education secretary, Duncan attacked “white suburban moms” and their children who turned to homeschooling in protest of the top-down Common Core “standards”/testing/data-mining program.

Duncan sneered that he found it “fascinating” that the grassroots anti-Common Core revolt came from “white suburban moms who—all of a sudden—their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were, and their school isn’t quite as good as they thought they were.”

This elitist control freak revealed his fundamental disdain for rabble-rousing parents who’ve taken educational matters in to their own hands. By characterizing the movement against Common Core as “white” and “suburban,” Duncan also exposed his bigotry against countless parents “of color,” like myself, who’ve long opposed Fed Ed’s sabotage of academic excellence, local control, and student privacy in school districts across the country.

Note that newly minted parents’ rights advocate Duncan never once advocated boycotting Chicago public schools, which he ran for eight years, for their abject failure to quell rampant school violence.

Nor has Duncan called for parents to demand their districts withdraw from the disastrous “PROMISE” alternative discipline program that he helped create. (After Duncan’s protege, Broward County School Superintendent Robert Runcie, initially denied that Parkland, Florida, shooter Nikolas Cruz had benefited from the program, he sheepishly acknowledged last week that Cruz had in fact been referred to the program and avoided criminal prosecution for school vandalism as a result.)

Nor has Duncan said a peep about systemic coddling of abusers in the classroom by teachers union presidents in New Jersey and Ohio, as exposed over the past month by undercover investigative journalists at Project Veritas.

Instead, Duncan has won high praise and more media interviews for his phony boycott proposal. “My family is all in if we can do this at scale,” he nobly tweeted.

But what his slavering fans in the liberal media won’t tell you is that Duncan’s wife works at and his own children attend the exclusive, private University of Chicago Laboratory Schools in tony Hyde Park, which a Lab Schools brochure brags is “patrolled by the University of Chicago Police Department and private security.”

https://www.dailysignal.com/2018/05/...eep-kids-safe/
]]>The Heritage Foundation@Heritagehttp://www.szone.us/showthread.php?t=150836California Could Become First State to Offer Health Care to Illegal Immigrantshttp://www.szone.us/showthread.php?t=150837&goto=newpost
Thu, 24 May 2018 09:53:32 GMTOn 05.23.18 08:17 AM posted by Nick Givas
Orange County*2nd District Supervisor Michelle Steel said Monday on Fox Business’ “After The Bell” that California could become the first state to offer free health care services to illegal immigrants.
“California (https://vo.heritage.org/2018/03/27/orange-county-sanctuary-states-unconstitutional/,DanaInfo=dailycaller.com+)*has 1.5 trillion in debt and on the top of it, that we have $258 billion unfunded pension liability. We’re talking about only two big unions we’re talking about, like public employees union and teachers union. Only that, $258 billion. How are you going to add more money for health care coverage for illegals?” Steel said. “I mean, this is almost like obnoxious.”
Image: http://dailysignal.com/wp-content/uploads/DCNF-Logo-300x100.png
Steel said the state government is pushing its agenda too far and thinks its financial estimates are unreliable.On 05.23.18 08:17 AM posted by Nick Givas

Orange County*2nd District Supervisor Michelle Steel said Monday on Fox Business’ “After The Bell” that California could become the first state to offer free health care services to illegal immigrants.

“California*has 1.5 trillion in debt and on the top of it, that we have $258 billion unfunded pension liability. We’re talking about only two big unions we’re talking about, like public employees union and teachers union. Only that, $258 billion. How are you going to add more money for health care coverage for illegals?” Steel said. “I mean, this is almost like obnoxious.”

Steel said the state government is pushing its agenda too far and thinks its financial estimates are unreliable.

“In 2015 they passed under 18,*illegal immigrants*that they can get the coverage. They say it was only going to cost only $182 million. It ended up costing $280 million. Almost double that,” Steel added. “So when they say it it’s $3 billion you don’t know how much it’s going to cost. We’re talking about 1.2 million people. You know what? They are really pushing it way too far.”

Steel said if California keeps providing financial benefits to illegal immigrants, the state will attract millions more, who will overwhelm the system and send the state spiraling into bankruptcy.

“You know you are getting welfare benefits. You have free health care coverage. And then you can hide, because the government itself is protecting these people even if they commit crime,” she concluded. “It’s going to be a utopia for illegal immigrants. They’re all going to come in from outside of the world, not just inside of United States, but how about the other side of the world? They all want to come in. Everything is free here.”

Adopting a daughter has changed her life and opened her eyes to the beauty of adoption, one mother says.

Finding out that the baby was addicted to an opioid couldn’t dim that beauty, she recalls in an interview with The Daily Signal.

“I can’t even tell you or measure the amount of joy that she has brought to us,” Lisa Alexander, who adopted 4-year-old Katharine with her husband Bruce, said in the phone interview Monday.

“When I first saw Katharine, it was very, very similar to having a birth child, like your own child,” Alexander said. “I think [that’s] what opened my eyes, and my heart, to understanding adoption.”

In a speech Tuesday night in Washington, President Donald Trump praised Katharine.

“Katharine’s 4 years old and she is full of incredible energy, spirit, and talent,” Trump told attendees at a gala hosted by the pro-life organization Susan B. Anthony List. “At the age of 2, she memorized ‘America the Beautiful.’ She recites poetry, and recently she announced to her dad that when she grows up she wants to be a famous police officer. And then when she gets tired of that, she wants to become president.”

After inviting Katharine and her parents up on the stage at the National Building Museum and greeting them, Trump added:*“She’ll be president someday.”

“So tonight, we celebrate you, Katharine,” the president continued. “We celebrate your life … and we celebrate all lives. We celebrate the loving choice of adoption.”

“Katharine reminds us that every life is sacred, and that every child is a precious gift from God, so true. As the Lord says in Jeremiah, ‘Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. Before you were born, I set you apart.’”

Alexander, 53, and her husband, Bruce, 60, had always wanted to adopt. But they had four children of their own and knew their ages could work as a factor against them.

In 2012, she attended a pro-life Mass at St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Washington, D.C., where she heard a guest speaker who had adopted six children, Lisa Alexander recalled.

“And the youngest child she said was about 8 months old. But more importantly, this woman looked to be my age, and at that time I was 47 turning 48 that year. And from that point on I just felt like the Spirit calling me, and I thought, ‘Well, this is kind of unusual at this late stage.’”

The Alexanders, who reside in Gaithersburg, Maryland, began the adoption process.

“Doors just kept on opening,” she said, and the couple began going to classes with Bethany Christian Services in Crofton, Maryland.

“My husband was able to get off work … at *3 or 4 p.m. to make it … for the eight weeks of classes,” Lisa Alexander said. “It was just amazing in itself the path that led up to that.”

When Alexander turned 50, she recalled, the couple began to consider adopting an older child instead of a baby.

But all that changed when they received a call from their social worker.

“She told us about … Katharine, and she said that she was passed over by a couple, and that we were the next in line, and the reason being is that she had an opioid addiction,” Alexander said.

Katharine’s birth mother was addicted to OxyContin due to pain from a back injury, and as a result the baby had to be weaned from the drug.

The agency, according to its policy, gave the Alexanders 24 to 48 hours to think about their decision.

“We called them the next day, 24 hours later, to say yes,” Lisa Alexander said.

Katharine was released from the hospital Jan. 14, 2014—10 days after she was born.

The couple brought her home Feb. 6, and the adoption was finalized the following January.

“The only thing I could attribute it to is just the Holy Spirit moved throughout this whole process. And we got to see Katharine twice … at the adoption agency, before we were able to take her home,” Alexander said. “And at that time, she was like 6 weeks old.”

The couple used the same agency, *Bethany Christian Services, that Lisa Alexander’s sandwich-board sign had invited expectant mothers to look into when she held it outside Dr. LeRoy Carhart’s abortion clinic in Germantown, Maryland.

Carhart gained notice as one of the few physicians in the nation known for performing late-term abortions. In 2017, the Germantown clinic where Carhart did abortions was closed after being sold to Maryland Coalition for Life.

The sign Alexander carried outside the clinic said she was willing to adopt and included the number for Bethany Christian Services.

Not much changed when Katharine joined the Alexander family, she said.

When Katharine got a little bit older and the weather was warm, Alexander would take the baby and promote adoption at the same abortion clinic.

The Alexanders’ oldest daughter, Codi, died in 2009. The three other children, Taylor, 22; Chase, 18; and Brandon, 15, welcomed Katharine as a sister, according to their mother.

“They don’t treat her any differently,” Alexander said. “They love her just the same as if being born into a family.”

https://www.dailysignal.com/2018/05/...asure-the-joy/
]]>The Heritage Foundation@Heritagehttp://www.szone.us/showthread.php?t=150838How China Became a Global Player in 50 Yearshttp://www.szone.us/showthread.php?t=150800&goto=newpost
Tue, 22 May 2018 23:43:51 GMTOn 05.22.18 01:44 PM posted by Bill Walton
“You’re looking at a country which is the most radical actor on the global stage since the French Revolution.”
China is plowing forward with an agenda of economic aggression, empirical ambitions, and a complete disregard for international law and customs. How did this happen? It turns out to be a toxic combination of long national embarrassment, Confucian thought, and terrible missteps by the U.S. and others.
To give us a much-needed Chinese history lesson, I brought in former Commerce Department official Pat Mulloy, who also served as a commissioner on the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, and Stefan Halper, a professor at Cambridge University who worked in the Nixon and Ford administrations. Both have written a great deal on China.
*Century of Humiliation *On 05.22.18 01:44 PM posted by Bill Walton

“You’re looking at a country which is the most radical actor on the global stage since the French Revolution.”

China is plowing forward with an agenda of economic aggression, empirical ambitions, and a complete disregard for international law and customs. How did this happen? It turns out to be a toxic combination of long national embarrassment, Confucian thought, and terrible missteps by the U.S. and others.

To give us a much-needed Chinese history lesson, I brought in former Commerce Department official Pat Mulloy, who also served as a commissioner on the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, and Stefan Halper, a professor at Cambridge University who worked in the Nixon and Ford administrations. Both have written a great deal on China.

Century of Humiliation

“I think you can’t understand what’s really happened here with our China relationship without understanding what the Chinese call their ‘century of humiliation.’ The Chinese are a very old and sophisticated civilization. They were a very prosperous society,” said Mulloy.

Around 1830, China’s economy amounted to almost a third of the world’s economy. That attracted Western interest. When British merchants and explorers tried to open up markets in China, the Chinese famously said, “We don’t want what you have,” and slammed the door in their faces.

Undaunted, the British grew opium in India and exported it to China. When Chinese leaders saw the impact opium was having on society, they tried to cut off trade.

The British quickly surmised that the Chinese were no match for them militarily and quickly gobbled up Hong Kong and control of other ports. Mulloy says the idea was to “carve up China just like they did Africa.”

Things just got worse for China when Japan took away Korea and Taiwan. The imperial system cratered in 1911 and attempts at a republic were a failure. Civil wars raged until the Japanese invaded the mainland in 1931.

Chinese loyalists fought with the Allies to defeat Japan in World War II, but another civil war ended with Mao Zedong and the communists controlling the country in 1949 and the Chinese nationalists we partnered with in the war fleeing to Taiwan.

In addition to killing tens of millions of his own people, Mao’s economic approach was also a disaster.

“He tried to rebuild China through a centrally planned economy. It didn’t work,” said Mulloy.

Nixon Opens the Door

Opportunity came knocking with the U.S. in 1972. President Richard Nixon was looking for another ally against the Soviet Union and the Chinese turned on the charm. They puffed up Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s ego and the door to the great economic comeback for China was suddenly open.

The new relationship was not initially centered on trade, but did envision a robust economic connection.

“The assumption was that if we traded with China, American corporations would benefit; Americans would be employed; the Chinese would benefit on their end; and that eventually China would develop into a market economy and then a democracy,” said Halper.

He says that assumption proved to be “dead wrong.” Halper says a simple appreciation for Chinese history should have given us a clue.

“It’s rooted in Confucian thought, Confucian thought being … hierarchical, deriving from the father and the family and responsibilities that people have to support and sustain that. Politics grew out of that and had to be consistent with it, and so you didn’t have a lot of room for experimentation,” he said.

US Mistakes and China’s Explosive Growth

Mao died in 1976. The new leader, Deng Xiaoping, quickly realized how to restart China’s economic engine.

“He said, ‘If we want to build a powerful China, we need foreign markets, foreign knowhow, foreign technology, and foreign investment, and if we get those, we can start building a very powerful country,’” said Mulloy.

Economically, the biggest changes happened in the 1990s and early 2000s, starting when the United States conferred permanent “Most Favored Nation” status on China.

These decisions proved disastrous.

“Prior to that, we could only give China [Most Favored Nation status] one year at a time because we had a law that said you can’t give a communist country permanent [Most Favored Nation] trade treatment,” said Mulloy. “Each year, if China wasn’t behaving properly, we could take it away.”

“It was a terrible mistake to give it up because we were unable to manage or govern the Chinese after that,” agreed Halper.

The next shoe to drop came with China’s inclusion in the World Trade Organization.

The U.S. only approved China’s entry on the condition that we could continue to punish what we considered unfair trade practices by China or anyone else. But when that position was challenged within the World Trade Organization, we agreed not to penalize anyone unless we won a dispute at the World Trade Organization.

We handcuffed ourselves and we’ve been handcuffed ever since. What was once an $80 billion trade deficit is now at $4.5 trillion. It should have been foreseeable, but Wall Street and multinational corporations, which foresaw big returns from China, lobbied Congress hard to get these things approved.

Today’s Chinese Challenges

I believe that fundamentally, a nation’s wealth lies in its productive capacity, including the ability to make things, not just think them up. Unfortunately, the desire of American companies to manufacture at the lowest possible price has allowed China to get its hands on our cutting-edge innovation.

Mulloy agreed:

If we’re going be the innovative economy, and we’re outsourcing our ability to do so, this is an enormous problem for the United States of America. Now, the Chinese and their 2025 plan identified 10 key technologies that are going be the key technologies they think of the coming century, and they want to be dominant in those by 2025.

Things get even more troubling when you combine China’s theft of our intellectual property with how they are spending all of the money pouring in from their economy.

“The Chinese have gotten a great deal of confidence about their ability to project force throughout Southeast Asia and throughout the South China Sea and the East China Sea, which are the areas near to Japan. They have essentially claimed 90,000 square miles of sea and islands and outcroppings as part of China,” said Halper.

Halper adds that China is now bullying the Philippines and others not to protest its territorial ambitions. Beyond that, when China is challenged and loses, it just ignores the decisions.

“When China displays this willingness to set aside the rule of law … and they’ve dismissed the legal architecture, which arose in the aftermath of World War II. They don’t accept the legitimacy of the World Bank, of the World Trade Organization, of any of these international organizations because they didn’t have a major hand in creating them. They say they were created by the West for the benefit of the West. When they set that aside, you’re looking at a country which is the most radical actor on the global stage, what, since 1789, since the French Revolution,” said Halper.

Now What?

All of this is fascinating, but it’s only the prologue. It’s vital to know this history, but how do we use this knowledge to develop the most effective possible strategy in confronting China?

Among all the presidents he has dealt with, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says Donald Trump is “the most unique” and is “changing history.”

The former House speaker has worked with many presidents, and said that although President Ronald Reagan “was remarkable in his own right,” Trump “is, in some ways, the most unique person I’ve ever worked with.”

He added: “Behind that tactical fluidity is enormous strategic steadiness.”

Gingrich made his remarks Tuesday at The Heritage Foundation, where he discussed his forthcoming book “Trump’s America: The Truth About Our Nation’s Great Comeback.”

The book is a follow-up to his 2017 book “Understanding Trump.”*

Gingrich says he wrote the new book in order to capture the entire picture of the Trump presidency.

“With all due respect to the president, who is a remarkable figure and is changing history and has shown a level of calm, steady perseverance under circumstances that normal people would have buckled and collapsed under, this is only half the story of Trump,” the former congressman from Georgia said.

“This is also the story of America. There is an enormous well of American patriotism, American conservatism, American common sense that has been building up and building up and building up, and Trump came along to articulate and personify what people wanted,” he said.

“It’s this coming together of Trump and Trump’s America,” he added. *

In late 2016 and early 2017, Gingrich participated in a series of lectures at Heritage to explain Trumpism.

Gingrich credited the Trump administration with several major successes, despite the opposition by anti-Trump coalitions.

He cited the rapid nomination of federal judges, the effort to deregulate sectors of the economy, pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal, moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, the growing economy, promises of space exploration, and combating liberal bias on college campuses.

Gingrich, referred to by some as Trump’s “chief explainer,” is known for breaking through the media bias the president and his administration confront.

The media’s anger toward Trump goes back to the shock of the 2016 election, where the elites “checked out,” Gingrich said.

“At 10 o’clock on election night, the elites were having to confront that Donald Trump had been elected,” he said. “They have never recovered. That really explains that bitterness, and the hostility, and the anger.”

He added: “One of the reasons I wrote ‘Trump’s America’ is that it struck me that we needed to have a definition of what this fight was about.”

“There can be no compromise between Trump’s America and the anti-Trump coalition,” Gingrich concludes in his book. “One side will win. One side will lose.”

Conservative lawmakers have no regrets about not voting for the farm bill, after House leadership refused to have an immediate vote on an immigration bill.

“There has to be an intensity and a focus directed on a problem and on a question in order to get it figured out, that is what we tried to accomplish last week,” Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said of the House Freedom Caucus sinking the vote on the farm bill May 18.

“I actually like the work requirements in the farm bill but my point was I ain’t gonna vote on a farm bill until we figure out what we are going to do on immigration, plain and simple,” Jordan said at Conversations with Conservatives, a monthly event with press to discuss the most important issues of the day.

“We have plenty of time to pass the farm bill for goodness’ sake,” added Jordan, a member of the House Freedom Caucus.

“We are trying to get a focus and an intensity on dealing with immigration in a way that is consistent with the mandate of the 2016 election,” Jordan said. “That has to happen, and yes, leadership should work with us to get that done, and that is all we are trying to do because this is an issue that was central to the campaign in 2016 that we were elected by the American people to deal with in the right way.”

Centrist Republicans in the U.S. House, including Rep. Carlos Curbelo, R-Fla., joined at least 19 other Republicans and a majority of Democrats to sign onto a plan that could give amnesty to those brought here illegally as children under President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program.

If all 193 Democrats join 25 Republicans in signing a discharge petition, they would reach the required 218 signatures and trigger a floor vote that could happen as soon as June 25.

Leadership announced Monday that lawmakers will vote in June on an immigration bill from Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, in exchange for a vote on the farm bill on June 22.

The Senate has already voted on and failed to pass four different immigration bills, one of which was a bill sponsored by seven senators, including Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and backed by the White House. It would have allocated $25 billion for border security measures, such as radar, physical and virtual fencing, and other technologies, including a border wall.

The Goodlatte bill would require employers to use E-Verify, now a voluntary system, to check the immigration status of workers and would authorize a wall at the U.S.-Mexico border and other efforts designed to increase border security.

Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., said he is “not a big fan of the Goodlatte bill,” but says he knows a vote triggered by the discharge petition would give amnesty to the roughly 800,000 recipients of DACA, whom some call “Dreamers.” *

“The discharge petition is a mistake and I think it is going to cause red states … previously red districts are going to struggle if that happens,” said Biggs. “I think the outcome of that would be a miserable … you are going to see amnesty and that will be an enormous, enormous problem.”

Rep. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, said lawmakers shouldn’t be voting on legislation that the president wouldn’t even sign.

“I think it is important to have a process where we can produce a bill the president can sign,” Davidson said, adding:

Everyone recognizes that the president isn’t going to sign a product of the discharge petition, a clean DREAMer Act. I think that rather [than] voting on things that can’t pass, that can’t get the president’s signature, we should continue our collaboration here and the process that we’ve been engaging on hasn’t produced that result.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2018/05/...n-immigration/
]]>The Heritage Foundation@Heritagehttp://www.szone.us/showthread.php?t=150798The Hubris of Judges Threatens Our Ability to Govern Ourselveshttp://www.szone.us/showthread.php?t=150797&goto=newpost
Tue, 22 May 2018 23:43:51 GMTOn 05.22.18 02:20 PM posted by Michael Tremoglie
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court issued a ruling in February establishing new congressional voting districts for the state’s residents. That ruling abolished the voting districts established by the state legislature in 2011.
Why? The justices felt the 2011 districts were political gerrymandering and discriminated against Democrats. Of course, the elected Pennsylvania Supreme Court justices are mostly Democrats.
This usurpation of a legislative function should be considered dangerous, regardless of one’s political affiliation. It was a concern of the Founding Fathers.
Ironically, it was Elbridge Gerry—after whom the word “gerrymandering” was created and who was a Massachusetts delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1787—who warned about judicial imposition. He voiced his concern about the “sophistry of the judges.”On 05.22.18 02:20 PM posted by Michael Tremoglie

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court issued a ruling in February establishing new congressional voting districts for the state’s residents. That ruling abolished the voting districts established by the state legislature in 2011.

Why? The justices felt the 2011 districts were political gerrymandering and discriminated against Democrats. Of course, the elected Pennsylvania Supreme Court justices are mostly Democrats.

This usurpation of a legislative function should be considered dangerous, regardless of one’s political affiliation. It was a concern of the Founding Fathers.

Ironically, it was Elbridge Gerry—after whom the word “gerrymandering” was created and who was a Massachusetts delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1787—who warned about judicial imposition. He voiced his concern about the “sophistry of the judges.”

Federalist 78 warned that judges might exercise their will instead of their judgment in their interpretation of laws. Federalist 81 declared that allowing the judiciary to construe the law would enable it to mold its own laws.

This has occurred more and more as judges at state and federal levels expropriate power assigned to the other two branches of government.

Federal judges attempted to usurp executive branch authority in terrorist detainee cases during the Bush administration and again most recently in the case of President Donald Trump’s lawful orders to restrict those wishing to enter the United States from nations where terrorists take refuge from the law.

But this commandeering of government is not a recent practice. Over the years, judges have demonstrated a desire to intercede in nonjusticiable affairs—just as was predicted in Federalist 78.

For example, in 1987, District Judge Russell Clark actually ordered a tax increase to fund a desegregation plan for Kansas City schools. Clark, an appointee of President Jimmy Carter, ordered a 150 percent increase in property taxes in Kansas City, Missouri, and a 1.5 percent income tax for Kansas City, and decreed that the state of Missouri was to pay the balance.

Since when did the Constitution authorize a judge to order a tax increase?

In other cities, judges have ordered criminals released from incarceration for no reason other than jails and prisons being—in their opinion—“overcrowded.”

Still other judges have reversed referenda. Judge Thelton Henderson issued an injunction against California’s Proposition 209, which was aimed at dismantling state affirmative-action programs based on sex or race.

Prop 209 was lawfully enacted by Californians in 1996, but Henderson, also a Carter appointee, thought his opinions to be superior to that of the electorate.

A panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals subsequently overturned Henderson’s ruling. In his majority opinion, Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain wrote, “A system which permits one judge to block with the stroke of a pen what 4,736,180 state residents voted to enact as law tests the integrity of our constitutional democracy.”

Would that all judges believed that were true, but they don’t. Indeed, it seems that we are moving toward a judiciocracy. Americans all along the ideological continuum need to remember that America is not ruled by judges.

Our country is a nation of the people, for the people, and by the people—and not just the people with the most prestigious law degrees.

This is a lightly edited transcript of an interview on The Daily Signal podcast Monday. Since the interview was recorded, House GOP leadership announced there will be a vote on the Goodlatte-McCaul bill in June.*

Katrina Trinko: Immigration was supposed to be dead as an issue, but in recent weeks a number of Republicans have decided to use a complicated maneuver to try to force a vote in the House on immigration. Essentially, if 25 Republicans sign a discharge petition, and all the Democrats join them, and then on very specific days they could in fact force an immigration vote.

On Fox News, House Majority Whip Steve Scalise warned against the maneuver recently, saying, “I don’t want to see this discharge petition moved because I want to solve the problem. … President Trump said he actually wants to solve this problem, and we’re working with President Trump to get a solution, but blanket amnesty with no border protection and no wall is not the answer.”

So joining us here to explain is Tommy Binion, who is the director of congressional and executive branch relations at The Heritage Foundation. Tommy used to work on the Hill himself … Tommy, first off, explain to us why a discharge petition could force a vote even though House GOP leadership doesn’t want an immigration vote.

Tommy Binion: Well, that’s the rule. There is essentially a House rule meant to protect the rank and file that says if you get 218 members of Congress to sign the discharge petition, then you can get a vote on something. It’s sort of a fail-safe in the House.

It’s viewed as a really aggressive anti-leadership move for Republicans, members of the majority party, to sign the discharge petition, but nonetheless it happens, rarely, but it happens, and it’s happening in this case.

As of now, 20 Republicans have signed a discharge petition. The discharge petition, in and of itself, is not all that complicated. If 218 members of the House sign it, they’re going to get a vote on whatever it discharges.

In this case what it discharges is a little complicated. It’s called a “Queen of the Hill” rule. So in the House, just about every day, the House passes a brand new rule that’s specific to a bill they want to consider. That’s their way of doing business in the House, that they adopt a new rule for every bill they want to consider.

The discharge petition would actually discharge a new rule that would get you four votes on DACA [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals], immigration-related bills, and whichever of the four, as long as it had a majority, had the most yes votes, would then be considered as adopted by the House.

So it’s setting up an amnesty DACA floor vote, actually four of them, and a prolonged debate on the merits of codifying DACA into law.

Daniel Davis:* So Tommy, who are some of the lead Republicans behind this, and why do you think they’re doing this now? Undercutting leadership at such a critical time.

Binion:* Well, so one of the lead members is actually somebody who’s gone now, but his signature still counts. This is one of the most outrageous parts of this experience. [Former Rep.] Charlie Dent signed the discharge petition, has now resigned from Congress, but he still counts. His signature still counts.

Davis: Why does it still count? You have to have been a member at the time of signing it?

Binion: That’s right. If and when there is a replacement for his seat, that person could take his name off of it, but until then it stays. And what was the second part of your question?

Davis: Oh, just why would they possibly want to undercut their party at such a critical time?

Binion: I don’t want to speak for them. I think their logic is faulty. After all, in my viewpoint, the worst thing for Republicans to do in an election year is spend the summer before the election talking about how many people they want to give amnesty to. It’s certainly not a way to turn out the conservative base in the November elections. I think it’s a very dangerous thing.

There’s a handful of Republicans who I think in a misguided way think they need to vote for amnesty in order to get re-elected. As we know, in an election year in Congress, it’s politics and polls that are driving the behavior and the fear of losing, and this is certainly no exception to that.

Trinko: Republican leadership has been very open about how they are opposed to this maneuver. Do they have any options if it gets to 25 Republican signatures?

Binion: So typically what happens is when a discharge petition gets close, and I would qualify this as pretty darn close, to getting the 218 necessary signatures, the speaker or the majority leader will give the signers of the discharge petition something along the lines of what they’re asking for in the discharge petition, but probably not all of it.

So it’s not in the speaker’s interest to let this happen. It’s a pretty big blow to his power. One discharge petition working will beget five more. There’ll be more of these types of efforts, and it will not be a good thing for the speaker’s power in the House. So he’s interested in heading it off. So what’s he do? He offers himself.

In this case what they want is a vote on amnesty, and so the Goodlatte bill, which is a bill that’s been around for six or eight months now, codifies DACA into law, and it does, as Whip Scalise was talking about in that Laura Ingraham video, it does a handful of other things along the lines of immigration enforcement.

So maybe the speaker will give these folks a vote on Goodlatte. I have a feeling that the Goodlatte bill, on its own, won’t be good enough for them. I think that they’ll have to tweak the Goodlatte bill, but I think the best case scenario is for them to handle this quickly and quietly and without advancing the cause of amnesty for … millions of illegal immigrants.

Davis: So obviously this is the House. If a bill passes, then the Senate would be able to consider it, but that’s a completely different question. Isn’t this really all dead in the water in the end, if the Senate decides not to take it up and if the president certainly decides not to sign it?

Binion: Yeah, that’s true, but I don’t think that that would happen. So I’m worried, and many others are worried, if an amnesty bill were to get that much traction that it passed the House, there’d be a lot of incentive for the Senate to move it.

Certainly the Senate, I think, they had that series of four votes on DACA-related measures earlier in the year in February. None of them garnered the votes to pass, but something this close to an active and having passed the House might have a better chance in the Senate. So I think the House is way more conservative than the Senate, and it would be far better to stop it in the House than to bank on it stopping in the Senate.

Trinko: Right, especially because, at least in recent years, it seems the Senate’s been a lot more involved in immigration from Gang of Eight to other endeavors.*Tommy, what, in an ideal perfect world, would conservative lawmakers be doing on immigration right now?

Binion: They would be focusing on, I think, the problems in the most reasonable order. It makes the most sense to attack border security first. We have an illegal immigration problem in this country. It’s an economic problem. It’s a rule of law problem. It’s a national security problem. And we need to stop it from getting any worse, and the only way to do that is to secure the border.

When the border is secure, then we need to work towards interior enforcement. We have millions of illegal immigrants in this country currently, working, paying taxes on a stolen Social Security number. Those things cause problems. We need to enforce the laws that are currently on the books.

Once you have border security taken care of and illegal immigration taken care of, you should fix the legal immigration system. You should align the legal immigration system with the interests of Americans, with the interests of the nation. We should be letting in the most qualified immigrants on a legal basis.

Once you have those things taken care of, then it would be in order to bring up the problem that is the people that are already here, but until you can do those first three things, it makes no sense to talk about the illegal immigrants that are already here.

Furthermore, when you start there, when you start at amnesty, it makes the other three problems worse. When you say, “Let’s give these 11 million people amnesty,” it puts more pressure on the border because people want to come when they think they’re going to get amnesty. It makes interior enforcement harder to do. One, it hurts the morale of [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], but two, it complicates illegal enforcement structure.

DACA extremely complicated the illegal enforcement structure …* I heard today that one of the things that happens is somebody will get arrested and then they’ll claim that they are eligible but haven’t yet applied for DACA and it will allow them to be released from custody. So these are problems caused by the fact that here in Washington, for a certain segment of our politicians, amnesty or talking about amnesty helps them politically, but it certainly hurts us from a policy standpoint.

Davis: All right, well Tommy, this is really a helpful breakdown. Thanks for being on the show for the first time. We hope to have you back soon.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2018/05/...-amnesty-vote/
]]>The Heritage Foundation@Heritagehttp://www.szone.us/showthread.php?t=1508015 Big Questions the FBI Hasn’t Answered on Its Conduct During the 2016 Campaignhttp://www.szone.us/showthread.php?t=150802&goto=newpost
Tue, 22 May 2018 23:43:51 GMTOn 05.22.18 01:26 PM posted by Fred Lucas
At least 19 House Republicans are sponsoring a resolution (https://zeldin.house.gov/sites/zeldin.house.gov/files/ZELDIN_051_xml%205.21%20v2.pdf) calling for a special counsel to investigate the conduct of the Justice Department and FBI during the 2016 election campaign.
For a year now, special counsel Robert Mueller and his team have investigated Russia’s meddling in the presidential election and possible collusion with the Trump campaign.
The resolution calls for a second special counsel to look at how the Justice Department handled the probe of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of state, how the Russia investigation regarding President Donald Trump began, and potential abuse of the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act.
The 12-page measure, if approved, would be a “sense of Congress” resolution and would not bind the Justice Department.On 05.22.18 01:26 PM posted by Fred Lucas

At least 19 House Republicans are sponsoring a resolution calling for a special counsel to investigate the conduct of the Justice Department and FBI during the 2016 election campaign.

For a year now, special counsel Robert Mueller and his team have investigated Russia’s meddling in the presidential election and possible collusion with the Trump campaign.

The resolution calls for a second special counsel to look at how the Justice Department handled the probe of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of state, how the Russia investigation regarding President Donald Trump began, and potential abuse of the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act.

The 12-page measure, if approved, would be a “sense of Congress” resolution and would not bind the Justice Department.

“In just the past few days, we learned that the DOJ, FBI, or both appear to have planted at least one person into Donald Trump’s presidential campaign to infiltrate and surveil the campaign,” Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y., said Tuesday at a Capitol Hill press conference. “This action alone reminds us of just how necessary this resolution is, as well as the appointment of a second special counsel.”

The Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General has completed a draft report on the FBI’s Clinton investigation and just announced it will do a separate review of the FBI’s apparent spying on the Trump campaign. But an inspector general does not have authority to subpoena and bring charges, as a special prosecutor would.

Here are five unanswered questions about the actions of the Justice Department and FBI during the 2016 presidential campaign.

1. Was ‘Informant’ a Spy in Trump Campaign?

Numerous media organizations reported in recent days that Stefan Halper, a professor at Cambridge University who served in three Republican administrations and has ties to the CIA and British intelligence, was a government informant who gathered information on the Trump campaign in 2016.

The White House backed the Justice Department’s decision to have the inspector general look into apparent spying on the Trump campaign, while also allowing White House chief of staff John Kelly to review classified information the department has resisted providing to Congress regarding the informant.

The New York Times reported last week that a “government informant” collected information from Trump campaign officials in an operation called “Crossfire Hurricane.” The newspaper reported:

The FBI obtained phone records and other documents using national security letters—a secret type of subpoena—officials said. And at least one government informant met several times with [Carter] Page and [George] Papadopoulos, current and former officials said. That has become a politically contentious point, with Mr. Trump’s allies questioning whether the FBI was spying on the Trump campaign or trying to entrap campaign officials.

Papadopoulos, a former adviser for the Trump campaign, pleaded guilty last fall to lying to investigators. Page, also an adviser on the Trump campaign, was the subject of government surveillance in 2016.

“If the FBI was running a confidential informant or a recruited asset against a presidential candidate, that would mark a significant departure from what is proper with regard to political targeting and the use of law enforcement,” Chris Farrell, a former Army counterintelligence officer who now directs investigations and research for Judicial Watch, told The Daily Signal.

After Trump and Republicans in Congress raised questions abouts its reporting, the Times published a follow-up story that seemed to parse the terms “informant” and “spy.”

A Times story over the weekend was headlined “FBI Used Informant to Investigate Russia Ties to Campaign, Not to Spy, as Trump Claims.” The story asserted: “No evidence has emerged that the informant acted improperly … or that agents veered from the FBI’s investigative guidelines.”

Nevertheless, such a move would be highly unusual during a presidential campaign, said Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation and a former Justice Department lawyer.

“Whether it’s a spy, informant, or an undercover agent, it is unprecedented for federal law enforcement to spy undercover against a political campaign,” von Spakovsky said.

The Times’ weekend story described an encounter in summer 2016:

Over drinks and dinner one evening at a high-end London hotel, the FBI informant raised the subject of the hacked Democratic National Committee emails that had spilled into public view earlier that summer, according to a person familiar with the conversation. The source noted how helpful they had been to the Trump campaign, and asked Mr. Papadopoulos whether he knew anything about Russian attempts to influence the 2016 presidential election.

Mr. Papadopoulos replied that he had no insight into the Russian campaign—despite being told months earlier that the Russians had dirt on Mrs. Clinton in the form of thousands of her emails. His response clearly annoyed the informant, who tried to press Mr. Papadopoulos about what he might know about the Russian effort, according to the person.

2. Who’s Holding the FBI Accountable for Now?

Attorney General Jeff Sessions informed Congress in March that he had opted against naming a second special counsel, but instead appointed U.S. Attorney John Huber of Utah to work with the Justice Department’s inspector general.

“The only thing that we have from Mr. Huber so far is an accumulation of frequent flyer miles,” Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., a sponsor of the resolution, said during the Capitol Hill press conference Tuesday.

“There has been no report, no investigation to speak of,” Meadows, chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, said. “I can tell you it is deeply troubling when we are talking about transparency that we are not getting transparency from the FBI and the Department of Justice.”

The Justice Department has asked its Office of Inspector General to expand the current probe of officials’ use of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, to include possible impropriety or political motivation with regard to spying.

This development occurred after Trump used Twitter to call for a probe.

I hereby demand, and will do so officially tomorrow, that the Department of Justice look into whether or not the FBI/DOJ infiltrated or surveilled the Trump Campaign for Political Purposes – and if any such demands or requests were made by people within the Obama Administration!

Vice President Mike Pence called the revelations “very troubling” during an interview Monday with Fox News Channel’s Martha MacCallum.

“With the revelations that our campaign may have been the subject of surveillance by the FBI, the president I think is grateful that the Department of Justice is going to have the inspector general look into it and determine and ensure that there was no surveillance done for political purposes against our campaign,” Pence said.

3. What Did Obama Know?

Trump drew former President Barack Obama into the controversy with a Monday tweet.

The Wall Street Journal asks, “WHERE IN THE WORLD WAS BARACK OBAMA?” A very good question!

Trump was referring to the headline on a May 18 column by James Freeman, an assistant editor at The Wall Street Journal.

Freeman’s column asked: “And what does the man who was serving at the time as the FBI’s ultimate boss have to say about all this? Perhaps it’s a good moment to get the whole story from our 44th president.”

If Obama was not informed about the matter, he perhaps should have been, von Spakovsky told The Daily Signal.

“Given the danger posed when law enforcement is capable of being used for political purposes, I don’t believe federal law enforcement should initiate such a project without getting the approval of the president of the United States,” von Spakovsky said.

4. Was the FBI Honest on the Steele Dossier?

Judicial Watch’s Farrell said the apparent spying is more alarming in the context of the anti-Trump dossier compiled by former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele.

The Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee funded the dossier as opposition research and the FBI used it as a basis for obtaining a FISA warrant to surveil Page, the Trump campaign aide.

The House resolution faults the FBI for “failing to disclose” to the FISA court that the dossier was a political opposition research. The resolution quotes former FBI Director James Comey as calling the information in the dossier “salacious” and “unverified.”

Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, noted how many FBI and Justice Department officials have been fired, reassigned, or demoted over the past year.

“What did all these fired, reassigned, and demoted people do while they were in the Obama administration? They are the ones who ran the Clinton investigation, and they are the ones who launched an investigation into President Trump’s campaign,” Jordan said during the press conference.

“When they ran that investigation, what did they do?” the Ohio Republican asked. “They took this dossier, dressed it all up, made it look like it was legitimate intelligence, took it to a secret court to get a secret warrant to spy on a fellow American citizen. When they went to the court, they didn’t tell them who paid for the document.”

5. Did FBI Credibly Probe Clinton’s Email Practices?

The House Republican resolution asks for the new special counsel to probe several aspects of how the FBI investigated the Clinton email scandal.

A draft inspector general report criticizes the FBI’s investigation of how Clinton conducted official business over a private email server as Obama’s first secretary of state, the Associated Press reported late Monday.

FBI officials knew in September 2016 that Clinton emails were stored on the laptop of disgraced former Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., but waited until days before the Nov. 8 election to obtain a search warrant.

The inspector general’s report was expected to criticize Comey, the FBI director during the Clinton email probe and early stages of the Trump-Russia probe. The president fired Comey in May 2017.

Comey writes in his book, “A Higher Loyalty,” that he learned in early October that Weiner’s laptop could be connected to the Clinton email investigation. He said it wasn’t until Oct. 27 that FBI officials asked his permission to seek a warrant.

The House resolution refers to a Senate Judiciary Committee finding that reads: “Comey was prepared to exonerate Hillary Clinton as early as April or May of 2016 when he began to draft a statement announcing the end of the investigation, before up to 17 key witnesses, including former Secretary Clinton and several of her closest aides, were interviewed.”

Comey told the House Judiciary Committee in September 2016 that he made the decision not to recommend criminal charges after the FBI interviewed Clinton on July 2.

The inspector general’s report also is expected to criticize a series of electronic text messages between FBI agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page that disparaged Trump during the campaign, AP reported. Strzok, a lead agent in the Clinton probe, reportedly was having an affair with Page at the time.

Antonia Okafor is now a gun rights supporter and political commentator. But in college, she found her political beliefs shifting from left to right. She explains what happened. Plus: A new study indicates that political correctness may have helped President Donald Trump win the election.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2018/05/...-conservative/
]]>The Heritage Foundation@Heritagehttp://www.szone.us/showthread.php?t=150803US-China Truce on Trade War Is Good Progresshttp://www.szone.us/showthread.php?t=150804&goto=newpost
Tue, 22 May 2018 23:43:51 GMTOn 05.22.18 12:50 PM posted by Riley Walters
Over the weekend, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who led U.S.-China trade negotiations, announced a trade war between the two countries was “on hold (http://video.foxnews.com/v/5787400191001/?#sp=show-clips).”
This progress will surely bring a sigh of relief for American farmers—and short-term stability to international markets as tensions rightly de-escalate.
*Working Backward*
The two sides have been negotiating over bilateral trade concerns for some time now. The most significant progress was made after two days of talks in Washington last week.On 05.22.18 12:50 PM posted by Riley Walters

Over the weekend, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who led U.S.-China trade negotiations, announced a trade war between the two countries was “on hold.”

This progress will surely bring a sigh of relief for American farmers—and short-term stability to international markets as tensions rightly de-escalate.

Working Backward

The two sides have been negotiating over bilateral trade concerns for some time now. The most significant progress was made after two days of talks in Washington last week.

While Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross will be traveling to China soon to flesh out the details of their agreement, for now the two sides have committed to:

Buy more American. China will commit to increasing its purchases of American energy—specifically, shale oil and liquefied natural gas—and purchase 35 percent to 40 percent more agricultural products in 2018. China’s Ministry of Commerce has also dropped its anti-dumping investigation on U.S. sorghum.

Seek favorable conditions. The two sides will continue discussing ways to expand the trade in other manufactured goods and services.

Protect intellectual property. China will make relevant amendments to its laws, such as its patent law, to strengthen intellectual property protection.

Work together and encourage investment. The two sides will strive to create and encourage a fair and level playing field for investment. They also will continue high-level engagement to resolve trade and economic concerns.

The devil will be in the details, however. One issue the U.S. and China often have disagreed about is the time frame in which these agreements will go into force. But it’s good to know $200 billion worth of bilateral trade is no longer at risk of coming under a 25 percent tax increase.

Previous Demands

All of this comes on the heels of President Donald Trump’s economic team visiting Beijing earlier this month. From what’s been released publicly, very little came of these negotiations.

We did learn, however, the most important part of any negotiation—namely, what each side wants from the other.

The U.S. side made clear it would like Beijing to:

Reduce the U.S. trade deficit with China by $200 billion by the end of 2020.

Remove tariff and nontariff barriers equal to at least the same level as those of the U.S.

Commit to improving access for U.S. services and agricultural products.

Quit subsidizing, and giving other forms of government support for, its industrial policies.

Not retaliate against U.S. measures to restrict Chinese investment in sensitive U.S. technology sectors.

Eliminate certain requirements for joint ventures.

Remove barriers to investment found on the Chinese “Negative List” for investment.

Eliminate policies and practices that require technology transfer.

Ensure there will be no more government-enabled cybertheft of intellectual property.

Enforce better intellectual property protection.

Withdraw its request for consultation from the World Trade Organization over the U.S.’ proposed enforcement of Title 3 of the U.S. Trade Act of 1974.

Agree to meet quarterly to review the progress of reforms.

Beijing wants the U.S. to:

Suspend the proposed 25 percent tariff on Chinese imports.

Not initiate any investigations against China in the future.

Drop the surrogate country approach in anti-dumping, anti-remedy cases.

Open government procurement to Chinese technologies and services.

Lift bans on the export of high technologies to China.

Give equal treatment to Chinese companies in national security review.

Open its e-payment market to Chinese companies.

Approve China International Capital Corp.’s application for a financial license.

Adjust the export ban for Chinese telecommunications company ZTE Corp.

It was unrealistic from the beginning to ask China to buy $100 billion more in American goods. The Chinese side took a hard stance against making outright purchases of any amount and pushed back against abandoning its industrial policy of Made in China 2025.

It was likewise unrealistic that the U.S. would open up purchases of U.S. sensitive technology to China—which is governed by American export control regulations—or give Chinese companies equal weight in government procurements. (China is not even a party to the World Trade Organization’s Government Procurement Agreement.)

Trump did ask the Commerce Department to look into re-evaluating its punishment of ZTE Corp. The company was essentially crippled in April after the Commerce Department announced U.S. companies must cease selling components to the telecom company.

The White House has been active in saying that the re-evaluation was separate from the ongoing economic negotiations and that ZTE will not be getting off “scot-free,” but U.S. intentions often differ from Chinese perceptions.

The administration is now considering changing the seven-year sanction to another round of fines and management changes.

A Freebee

Prior to the most recent negotiations, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced China would be making significant openings of its auto and financial sectors for foreign investment, as well as reducing tariffs on auto imports.

China has been making progress in reducing its barriers to trade and investment, but not specifically because of U.S. demands. Beijing’s announcement of its intention to reduce its tariffs on some auto parts from 25 percent to 15 percent will benefit all exporters to China, not just the U.S.

That said, negotiations over economic relations between the U.S. and China are far from over.

Tensions will likely heat up again at some point, especially as Washington goes into campaign mode, but the current solutions on the table are better than a trade war. Recognizing that is important progress for the administration.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2018/05/...good-progress/
]]>The Heritage Foundation@Heritagehttp://www.szone.us/showthread.php?t=150804To Make Congress Face Down the Debt, Revive the Budget Processhttp://www.szone.us/showthread.php?t=150805&goto=newpost
Tue, 22 May 2018 23:43:51 GMTOn 05.22.18 12:32 PM posted by Romina Boccia
It doesn’t take a genius to realize the U.S. budget process is broken.
The biggest reason for that is that too much spending is growing on autopilot. Now, Congress wants to double down by budgeting even less frequently.
Speaking to the Washington Examiner this month, Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark., who co-chairs the Joint Select Committee on Budget and Appropriations Process Reform, suggested that lawmakers were considering moving to a biennial budget cycle.
“Just based on the feedback, I think the committee is coalescing around a biennial budget,” Womack was quoted as saying.On 05.22.18 12:32 PM posted by Romina Boccia

It doesn’t take a genius to realize the U.S. budget process is broken.

The biggest reason for that is that too much spending is growing on autopilot. Now, Congress wants to double down by budgeting even less frequently.

Speaking to the Washington Examiner this month, Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark., who co-chairs the Joint Select Committee on Budget and Appropriations Process Reform, suggested that lawmakers were considering moving to a biennial budget cycle.

“Just based on the feedback, I think the committee is coalescing around a biennial budget,” Womack was quoted as saying.

“I’ve not had anybody push back significantly,” he explained.

The proposal currently under consideration would relieve the budget committees in the House and Senate from pursuing a budget resolution on an annual basis. Instead, Congress would only pursue a budget resolution every other year, while continuing to pursue appropriations annually.

It’s a strange proposal for Womack, who is also the chairman of the House Budget Committee, to cheerlead. It would reduce that committee’s power yet further—but perhaps that’s exactly the goal.

This so-called “hybrid” approach is quite tempting for lawmakers, especially in an election year. Budgeting is about choices and trade-offs.

It’s not surprising that lawmakers would rather avoid the difficult subject of how to balance the budget and reduce the deficit when doing so is becoming harder each and every year.

With more than $15 trillion in debt to the markets, and with an additional $6 trillion the federal government has conveniently borrowed from its own agencies (including the Social Security trust fund), the U.S. budget process has enabled government largesse by default.

Autopilot spending on entitlement programs is the largest driver of growing spending and debt. With more than two-thirds of the U.S. budget going out the door on what are permanent appropriations, lawmakers have been able to turn a blind eye to lingering—and growing—problems in health care and other entitlement benefit programs, seemingly without consequence.

Just about the only part of the budget that gets regular attention from lawmakers is that part that requires annual appropriations. At $1.3 trillion, based on Congress’ latest omnibus, the casual observer can be forgiven for thinking that the discretionary budget, which funds defense and domestic agencies, is all the budget the U.S. government has to worry about.

Far from it, the vast majority of the $4.1 trillion in projected spending for fiscal year 2018 will go to federal health care programs and Social Security. These programs make up more than half of the budget, and their share is growing rapidly.

(Source: Federal Budget in Pictures/Office of Management and Budget)

The budget resolution is the only legislative document that confronts Congress with the entirety of the federal budget.

Grappling with the worsening fiscal situation encourages lawmakers to put forth proposals to address growing spending and debt. The budget resolution is the unifying document wherein the majority party in Congress lays out its vision for the fiscal future of the nation.

In other words, the budget resolution matters.

The budget resolution is also the only way for Congress to invoke reconciliation, a powerful legislative tool that facilitates changes to taxes and entitlement spending by fast-tracking eligible bills.

Reconciliation most recently facilitated the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the most sweeping change to U.S. tax policy in 30 years.

Reconciliation is also a powerful fiscal tool lawmakers should leverage to pursue changes to autopilot entitlement programs that are driving the U.S. budget deeper into debt. Congress must spend more time reconciling tax and spending policies, not less.

Rather than concocting ways of abdicating yet more responsibility over the federal budget, lawmakers would do the American people a greater service by discussing ways of reviving the budget process as a critical tool to arrive at fiscal discipline.

“No budget, no pay” is one heck of an incentive to compel Congress to take the budget process more seriously.

Don’t expect lawmakers to suggest effective ways to revive a process they’ve let purposefully fall by the wayside. That kind of pressure—to perform in their jobs or be held accountable—will need to come from the outside.

If you want to understand the moral sickness at the heart of leftism, read the first paragraph of the most recent column by Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne:

It’s never right to call other human beings ‘animals.’ It’s not something we should even have to debate. No matter how debased the behavior of a given individual or group, no matter how much legitimate anger that genuinely evil actions might inspire, dehumanizing others always leads us down a dangerous path.

Let’s begin with the first sentence: “It’s never right to call other human beings ‘animals.'”

This is so self-evident to Dionne that he adds, “It’s not something we should even have to debate.”

Only someone who has never debated the issue could make such a claim.

So allow me to debate the assertion.

My view is the antithesis of Dionne’s. As I see it, it is not right to never call another human being an “animal.”

Calling the cruelest among us names such as “animal” or any other “dehumanizing” epithet actually protects humans. The word “beastly” exists for a reason and is frequently applied to human beings. By rhetorically reading certain despicable people out of the human race, we elevate the human race. We have declared certain behaviors out of line with being human.

Biologically, of course, we are all human. But if “human” is to mean anything moral—anything beyond the purely biological—then some people who have committed particularly heinous acts of evil against other human beings are not to be considered human. Otherwise “human” has no moral being. We should then not retain the word “inhumane.” What is the difference between “he is inhumane” and “he is an animal”? Both imply actions that render the person no longer human.

Dionne provides his answer at the end of the paragraph: “dehumanizing others always leads us down a dangerous path.”

He provides not a single argument or illustration for this truly absurd comment.

Anyone who refuses to “dehumanize” the Nazi physicians—who, with no anesthesia, froze naked people for hours and then dropped them in boiling water to rewarm them; put people in depressurized rooms where their eardrums burst, driving them out of their minds from pain; rubbed wood shavings and ground glass into infected wounds, etc.—is, to put it very gently, profoundly morally confused.

What would Dionne have us call those Nazi physicians—”not nice,” “badly flawed,” “evil”? Why is rhetorically ostracizing them from the human race “a dangerous path”? He doesn’t have an answer because he lives in the left’s world of moral-sounding platitudes.

Leftism consists almost entirely of moral-sounding platitudes—statements meant to make the person making them feel morally sophisticated. But based on their relative reactions to the sadists of the MS-13 gangs, I trust President Donald Trump’s moral compass more than Dionne’s.

It is ever dangerous to use dehumanizing rhetoric on people? Of course—when it is directed at people based on their race, religion, ethnicity, nationality, or any other immutable physical characteristic.

The Nazis did what they did to Jews and others because they dehumanized them based on their religious/ethnic/racial identity. That’s why racism is evil. But why is it dangerous to use such rhetoric on people based on their behavior? By equating labeling the cruelest among us “animals” with labeling Jews “animals,” Dionne cheapens the fight against real evil.

I once asked Rabbi Leon Radzik, a Holocaust survivor who had been in Auschwitz, what word he would use to characterize the sadistic guards in the camp. I will never forget his response: “They were monsters with a human face.”

If you’re ambivalent about the crisis of pornography in America, The New York Times can change that. Almost instantly. The paper jolted an entire nation into caring with its jarring February exposé, “What Teenagers Are Learning from Online Porn” (warning: extremely graphic). If their stories don’t shock, repulse, sober, and motivate you, nothing will.

What our kids are stumbling on isn’t your grandfather’s pornography. These aren’t Playboy magazines stashed under a teenage boy’s bed. These are raw, violent, and nauseating videos that they don’t have to sneak into a store for. Every child has a world full of porn at their fingertips. Every time they hold a cellphone or log on to a laptop, the door is open to a life-changing experience that could kill the relationships in their lives forever.

Porn is everywhere, and the*research is grim. States are lining up to declare it a public health hazard, and while a handful of people might mock the wave of legislation, Americans on both sides of the aisle are realizing: this is an actual catastrophe.

These sites, the same ones teaching kids a distorted and twisted version of sex, get more visitors each month than Netflix, Amazon, and Twitter combined. These are the actors who are being exploited for an industry that’s tied to the dark world of*trafficking, domestic violence, child abuse, and abortion. This is the sinister trade that’s teaching men to dehumanize women, leading spouses to stray from marriages, and destroying intimacy the world over.

This is no longer a Republican or Democratic issue. It’s an American issue, and if more people don’t stand up and do something about it, we risk losing society as we know it. Nine states have agreed, passing resolutions that make fighting pornography a priority of local communities. Missouri could be next.

Calling it a “disturbing and invasive social evil,” Resolution 52 sailed out of the state Senate to the Missouri House. “Pornography has become the cancer that nobody [wants to talk] about,”*one local leader said. “Almost everyone has been personally impacted by porn or knows someone who has … SCR 52 breaks the silence in Missouri by declaring to the world that pornography is a public health crisis.”

This is no longer someone else’s problem. It affects our playgrounds, our politics, even our pulpits. The devastation to marriages and families and teenagers is real.

“We are supposed to be in the midst of a great sexual reassessment,” Ross Douthat*argued in a New York Times piece, “a clearing-out of assumptions that serve misogyny and impose bad sex on semi-willing women. And such a reassessment will be incomplete if it never reconsiders our surrender to the idea that many teenagers, most young men especially, will get their sex education from online smut … The belief that it should not be restricted is a mistake; the belief that it cannot be censored is a superstition. Law and jurisprudence changed once and can change again … ”

As a parent, I can’t encourage you strongly enough to take this issue seriously. Yes, it’s an uncomfortable topic. But it’s a lot less uncomfortable than dealing with the sexual abuse, addictions, disease, and broken relationships that follow. If you don’t know what to say,*start here*or*here*or*here.*It might be one of the most important conversations you have.

This was originally*published*in Tony Perkins’ Washington Update, which is written with the aid of Family Research Council senior writers.*

https://www.dailysignal.com/2018/05/...risis-of-porn/
]]>The Heritage Foundation@Heritagehttp://www.szone.us/showthread.php?t=150806Dispelling False Narratives in the Wake of the Santa Fe Tragedyhttp://www.szone.us/showthread.php?t=150808&goto=newpost
Tue, 22 May 2018 23:43:51 GMTOn 05.22.18 09:49 AM posted by Amy Swearer
Last week, a teenager stole his father’s shotgun and .38-caliber revolver, smuggled them into his Santa Fe, Texas, high school under a trench coat, and proceeded to murder 10 innocent people before surrendering to police.
It’s another devastating reminder that human beings are capable of inflicting horrific pain on each other, and that while the nation’s schools have become progressively safer over the last 30 years, there is still much more that can be done (https://www.heritage.org/firearms/report/focusing-school-safety-after-parkland) to prevent future tragedies.
This shooting has also helped perpetuate gun control and school safety narratives that are sliding further from the truth than ever before. It is important that these false narratives be corrected—we do not honor those who lost their lives by calling for policies that won’t prevent future tragedies because they aren’t based on facts.
Here are three of those...On 05.22.18 09:49 AM posted by Amy Swearer

Last week, a teenager stole his father’s shotgun and .38-caliber revolver, smuggled them into his Santa Fe, Texas, high school under a trench coat, and proceeded to murder 10 innocent people before surrendering to police.

It’s another devastating reminder that human beings are capable of inflicting horrific pain on each other, and that while the nation’s schools have become progressively safer over the last 30 years, there is still much more that can be done to prevent future tragedies.

This shooting has also helped perpetuate gun control and school safety narratives that are sliding further from the truth than ever before. It is important that these false narratives be corrected—we do not honor those who lost their lives by calling for policies that won’t prevent future tragedies because they aren’t based on facts.

Here are three of those narratives.

1. See, armed guards are ineffective at preventing school shootings.

Some gun control advocates have repeated this argument after learning that Santa Fe High School had two armed school resource officers on duty during the shooting. But this argument fails to account for the fact the officers’ timely response almost certainly prevented further loss of life in this particular incident.

Although 30 minutes elapsed between the moment the shooter opened fire and the moment he laid down his firearms and surrendered to police, it’s unclear how long he was actively shooting and how long he was holed up in a classroom contemplating suicide.

What is clear, though, is that, in the words of Galveston County Judge Mark Henry, the response of the school police officers was “very critical” to ensuring the carnage was not even worse. One of the officers, John Barnes, was shot in the arm during the confrontation, and at the very least served to distract the shooter from his rampage.

Further, even if we considered armed guards to have been a complete failure at Santa Fe High School—a highly dubious proposition given the information detailed above—there are numerous other instances of armed guards indisputably saving many lives in similar scenarios.

Take, for instance, the events at an Illinois high school just days before the Santa Fe shooting, where an armed school resource officer shot and subdued a former student who opened fire at a graduation practice. Because of the officer’s quick response, not a single innocent person was injured.

In the weeks after the tragic murder of 17 individuals at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, where an armed school resource officer failed to respond to the sounds of gunfire, an officer was credited with saving lives at a Maryland high school when he immediately confronted an attacker after he killed one student and wounded another.

Finally, no one suggests that armed guards can prevent all school deaths any more than having a large police force can prevent all criminal activity. Protecting the nation’s students in the same way we protect concertgoers, celebrities, and politicians means we must utilize a variety of safety measures—only one of which is more armed security at schools.

In this case, there are serious questions about how a student was able to reach a classroom with two firearms—including a less-than-concealable shotgun—under a trench coat without raising suspicion or being otherwise noticed.

This could likely be addressed by limiting the number of school entry points and using magnetometers, which a number of schools already use in tandem with armed security.

2. This is why we need commonsense gun control.

Not a single commonly proposed gun control law would have been more effective than existing laws at preventing a teenager—already too young to buy or own firearms—from stealing his father’s legally owned “non-assault weapons,” taking them into a gun-free zone, and murdering 10 innocent people.

This is not an unusual case, either. Measures such as raising the minimum age of firearm purchase, banning so-called “assault weapons” (a made-up term intended to make certain guns sound scary), imposing universal background checks, or mandating waiting periods rarely pose significant hurdles to mass shooters.

School shooters in particular don’t typically use firearms they purchased themselves, but rather they use firearms that they had ready access to from older friends or family members. Raising the minimum age of firearm purchase to 21 not only fails to address the prominent factors in firearm access for school shooters, but also deprives law-abiding young adults of the capacity to adequately exercise their own right to self-defense.

Similarly, school shootings (and mass public shootings generally) are rarely carried out with “assault weapons.” Nor does the use of an “assault weapon” indicate that the incident will have a high casualty count, because semi-automatic rifles are no more or less deadly at close range than other commonly owned firearms. In fact, shotguns cause almost unrivaled devastation to the human body in close-quarter situations. (See here also.)

Moreover, the data doesn’t support an assertion that the use of 30-round (“high capacity”) magazines result in higher numbers of casualties than 10-round magazines. The Virginia Tech killer used only two handguns to take twice as many lives as the Parkland killer. He simply brought extra magazines.

3. The nation’s students are in more danger than the nation’s soldiers.

The Washington Post helped propagate this narrative with its decision to run the headline: “2018 has been deadlier for schoolchildren than service members.” This story was then retweeted by thousands, and the alleged fact repeated countless more times.

The problem is that it isn’t true.

While more students have been killed in school shootings so far this year than military members who died while on duty, the reality is that the rate of death—which more accurately reflects “deadliness”—if far higher for service members.

Why? Because military members constitute a much smaller segment of the population than do students. There are over 50 million students in the nation’s K-12 schools, but only 1.3 million military servicemen and women (many of whom are not actively deployed in war zones).

As Robby Soave from Reason points out, this means that servicemen and women are 17 times more likely to be killed than students. This is true even though 2018 has been a year of extraordinarily high numbers of school shooting victims and a comparatively low number of combat deaths.

Despite the horrific nature of school shootings and their ability to shock the nation’s conscience, they remain incredibly uncommon occurrences.

Their rarity does not make them any easier to comprehend, nor should anyone expect it to bring comfort to grieving friends and relatives. But it does put into perspective the conversations we should be having about how to protect students from in-school violence of all kinds.

These events are tragic. But they are rare. And there are ways to prevent them from happening in the future. It just happens that the most effective preventions are those based in reality, not in misinformation.

Editor’s note: The name of the Oregon high school where a shooting occurred in 2014 has been corrected.

Ireland is currently engaged in a contentious fight over the right to life of the unborn—and it’s hardly being fought on an even playing field.

Ireland is set to vote Friday on a measure that would either remove or retain the eighth amendment to its constitution, which recognizes the right to life of the unborn and thus bans all abortions except those to save the life of the mother.

Pro-life Irelanders have faced a wall of opposition. First, there is the media, which is largely pro-choice and has covered the debate from a decidedly pro-choice angle. That’s hardly surprising given that Ireland’s National Union of Journalists is itself openly pro-choice.

Perhaps more stunningly, every major political party in the country has come out in favor of removing the right to life of the unborn from Ireland’s constitution. In addition, multiple pro-choice organizations were found to have illegally accepted substantial funding from George Soros’ Open Society Foundations to promote the liberalization of Ireland’s abortion laws.

So it was against an overwhelmingly pro-choice backdrop that the pro-life No campaign opted to make its case online. There, it assumed it could make its case without it being twisted by the media.

But recent events prove that optimism was misplaced.

On May 8, the No campaign placed a substantial online ad buy with Google. Less than 24 hours later, Google announced that it was “suspending” all advertisements related to the referendum within Ireland until the referendum was complete, effectively locking both campaigns out of advertising on their platforms, including YouTube.

By this time, the Yes side had already lobbied online for weeks.

Google explained to the press that it had concerns about the electoral integrity of the referendum. Google has since failed to comment, either publicly or privately, as to what those concerns are or if they are suggesting our referendum process has somehow been compromised.

Interestingly, the No campaign received a text from Google informing it of the ban just six minutes before it was publicly announced, but the Yes campaign’s press release—which welcomed the ban—was dated from the day before, meaning it received much more advance warning.

Facebook had previously announced a ban on foreign advertisements during the referendum period, which both campaigns welcomed as proportional and reasonable.

Google said its ban was “fair” because it banned all campaigns equally, but the fact is that the No campaign was more effective at using online methods to reach voters. The Yes campaign has openly admitted that.

Google shut down its platform to all campaigns despite knowing it would disproportionately harm the No campaign. Google had access to all the analytics from the advertisements on both sides. It knew exactly where each side would devote its resources and that the No side was stronger online.

To put all this into an American perspective, this is basically as if Google, two weeks from the midterm elections, decided it was going to ban all election ads after having been lobbied furiously to do so by one of the parties because that party suddenly realized it was losing the digital fight; announced it was doing so because it had concerns the mid-terms might be compromised; and then refused to answer any questions when people rightfully asked, “What do you mean our elections are compromised?”

Google apparently believes electoral integrity is important enough to raise a general concern about, but not important enough to actually specify its concerns.

The Google decision is particularly worrying when you consider the broader implications of it. Google dominates online advertising and so has a significant ability to shape public awareness and opinion. So far, it’s been hesitant to use that ability to its own ends in this debate.

But if Google is now willing to constrain political speech, knowing it could potentially change the outcome of a referendum, questions must be asked as to how far Google will go.

Is this practice of banning campaign ads something Google will continue in future elections and referenda? If so, will it still continue to refuse to tell the public, or even the campaigns themselves, why it’s doing so?

Considering Google’s reputation for being less than hospitable to conservative and libertarian staff, can we trust that Google will fairly handle political advertisements, or will its actions very quietly, very subtly hand the advertising advantage to the more progressive candidates?

Considering Google will not publicly explain its actions in Ireland, these deeper questions are not ones that Google will likely answer. Yet if it keeps making decisions that clearly aid one side over another in the political arena, it may soon find itself on the political hot seat.

Against the wishes of House GOP leadership, some Republican lawmakers are working with Democrats to force a vote on controversial immigration legislation. The Heritage Foundation’s Tommy Binion explains. Plus: Classical music can change people’s behavior—and public spaces are taking advantage of this.

Fake news, move over—there’s a new con (wo)man in town. It’s called fake feminism, and according to a woman on the left, conservative women are the culprits.

Liberal feminist writer Jessica Valenti, author of books such as “Sex Object: A Memoir,” and “Why Have Kids?”, took to The New York Times Sunday to argue Republicans are “appropriating” feminist rhetoric in their use of the term. How dare they not ask for permission?

Conservatives appropriating feminist rhetoric despite their abysmal record on women’s rights is, in part, a product of the president’s notorious sexism. Now more than ever, conservatives need to paint themselves as woman-friendly to rehab their image with female voters.

In an attempt to justify the hypocrisy of feminists refusing to celebrate historic achievements such as Gina Haspel becoming the first female to lead the Central Intelligence Agency, Valenti argues, “Feminism isn’t about blind support for any woman who rises to power.”

Pay no mind to the many faces of the Democratic Party who have long argued women should vote based on their reproductive body parts.

“There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other,” feminist icon Gloria Steinem infamously said on the 2016 campaign trail.

“Any woman who voted against Hillary Clinton voted against their own voice,” said Michelle Obama just last year.

So which way is it—does feminism champion individuality and free thought, or is it “my way or the highway”?

Conservative women have long been divided on whether they identify as a feminist. Speaking on a 2018 women’s panel at the Conservative Political Action Conference, I publicly embraced the term to acknowledge that women throughout history were not always equal, and to honor all the work of the first-wave feminists who came before us.

Others argue the term was so badly hijacked to mean supporting an anti-male, pro-abortion without limits agenda, that it’s a lost cause to use the term.

“It’s difficult for me to call myself a feminist in a classic sense because it seems to be very anti-male, and it certainly is very pro-abortion, and I’m neither anti-male or pro-abortion,” White House senior adviser Kellyanne Conway said at CPAC in 2017. “I look at myself as a product of my choices, not a victim of my circumstances.”

Disagreement among right-leaning women about the feminist identity exemplifies a healthy debate seldom seen or allowed on the left. As the world witnessed at the inaugural Women’s March, unless you unequivocally support abortion, you’re not welcome to be one of them.

In response to the threat posed by right-leaning women who identify as feminist, Valenti said:

Now we have a different task: protecting the movement against conservative appropriation. We’ve come too far to allow the right to water down a well-defined movement for its own cynical gains. Because if feminism means applauding ‘anything a woman does’—even hurting other women—then it means nothing.

In truth, Valenti is right to feel threatened by those of us who’ve embraced the term “feminism.”

We’re reaching out to young women and explaining that disagreement is OK, and we’re showing that standing up for women can also mean standing up for issues such as tax reform, and a strong national defense.

After all, the Trump administration has one of the most pro-women foreign policy agendas we’ve seen in decades. Instead of sending planes filled with cash to regimes such as Iran who arrest women for taking off their hijabs, we’ve exited the Iran deal, sending the message that we stand in solidarity with women and no longer excuse violations of their most fundamental human rights.

And despite being pariahs within the culture, conservative women have played a healthy role in the #MeToo movement, proving that feminism can accomplish so much more when everyone’s involved.

Feminism has evolved, and it appears we’ve reached a breaking point. Lined with Planned Parenthood’s pocketbook, the left’s goal is to define it based on the single issue of abortion. Conservatives, on the other hand, argue it’s time for a more inclusive version of feminism that focuses on the plights of women worldwide—not just here in the United States.

Valenti and her allies can work overtime trying to discredit our perspective and accuse us of “appropriating” the term. But those of us who embrace it aren’t backing down to her school girl bully approach.

Instead, we’ll use the attack as an opportunity to have a conversation with not just America, but the entire world, about why feminism is about so much more than the single issue of abortion. We’ll show that real feminism is about furthering equality for all women around the world. And how electing Haspel as the first woman to lead the CIA was a great first step.

The Environmental Protection Agency recently announced the creation of an Office of Continuous Improvement to implement a lean management system. It’s part of Administrator Scott Pruitt’s effort to make the EPA—a*government agency known for its expansive reach—work more efficiently on behalf of American taxpayers.

EPA Chief of Operations Henry Darwin spoke exclusively to The Daily Signal about the new office and the work that its director,*Serena McIlwain, would be doing. A lightly edited transcript of the interview is below.

Rob Bluey: Administrator Scott Pruitt recently announced a new Office of Continuous Improvement at the EPA. Can you tell us what it’s going to do and why it matters?

Henry Darwin: The Office of Continuous Improvement is a group of EPA staff that will be helping me, as the chief of operations, deploy a new management system based upon lean principles. Initially, the vast majority of their time will be spent on deploying the new system, but over time, their time will be spent more so on performing problem solving and process improvements as we identify opportunities under the new management system.

Bluey: Let’s take a step back. What is lean management and how exactly are you applying it at EPA?

Darwin: Lean management is a system that is specifically designed to help identify opportunities for improvement and then to monitor performance to see whether or not there are additional opportunities for improvement. And also to make sure that, as we make improvements, that they’re sustained over time.

Typically what happens with most lean organizations, or organizations who say they’re lean, is they do a series of projects that result in theoretical process improvements. Without a system that is specifically designed to make sure that those processes do in fact improve and that there’s measurement in place to make sure that those processes improve, it’s often the case that those projects are not as successful as they would have otherwise been, had there been a system in place to support them.

Bluey: So how would you say that this is making the EPA operate more efficiently?

Darwin: EPA has a long history of using lean to improve processes. What it was lacking, and what we’re trying to implement for the first time, is a system that helps us identify strategic opportunities for us to use lean to improve our processes.

So whereas the previous administration merely asked or required the programs to perform lean events, we’re actually setting very strategic goals and objectives with high targets and we’re asking the programs and regional offices to meet those targets using lean. And then through the management system, we’re monitoring whether or not those improvements are actually occurring.

If they’re not, then we have the group of people now, the Office of Continuous Improvement, that can come in and analyze as to why those improvements aren’t happening or if there’s additional process improvements using lean that are needed in order to get them to where we want them to be as the administrator that sets forth goals and objectives for the agency.

Bluey: Under the Trump administration, you’ve made it a priority to track permitting, meeting legal deadlines, and correcting environmental violations. What did you find when you first took the job and how have things changed since then?

Darwin: The EPA has a history of measuring very long-term outcomes—outcomes that aren’t measurable on a regular basis. And what they had failed to do and what we’re starting to do is to measure those things that we can measure on a more frequent basis, those things that are important to our customers.

“Just like businesses have investors, we have investors. And our investors expect a return on their investment, which is clean air, clean land, clean water, and safe chemicals.”

Now, there are a lot of people out there that suggest we shouldn’t be calling those who we regulate our customers, but I’m not one of them. I believe that we do and should recognize our regulated community as our customers so we can apply business-related principles to our work.

With that said, we always have to remember that we have investors. Just like businesses have investors, we have investors. And our investors expect a return on their investment, which is clean air, clean land, clean water, and safe chemicals.

We always have to be mindful of the fact that even though we want to be paying attention to our customers’ needs as they get permits or licenses, or we’re working with them to achieve compliance, we also have to remember that our taxpayer investors expect a return on our investment. So we also have to be measuring those outcomes, those mission-related outcome measures, related to clean air, clean land, and safe chemicals.

Bluey: Let’s take permitting, for example. I know it’s something that Administrator Pruitt has talked about. He says that he wants to get permitting down to a certain period of time because in past administrations there was an indefinite period where people just didn’t get an answer, a yes or a no. He wants you to be able to say yes or no. What are some of the goals that you’re trying to do with regard to permitting specifically?

Darwin: When we arrived here in this administration, what we found was that we had heard anecdotally, from our customers, that the permitting process was simply taking too long.

What we also found was that the EPA did not have a system for tracking the amount of time it took to issue permits. So we simply went to the programs that issue permits and asked them for the last six months, how long was it taking for us to issue permits? And what we found was fairly surprising, that in some areas they were as long as three years to issue permits, which is simply unacceptable.

In having conversations with the administrator and talking about what a reasonable target or goal would be initially we agreed, he set the standard, or the goal, for issuing permits within six months. So that’s our goal.

Our goal is to, for every permit that’s directly issued by EPA, our goal is to reduce the amount of time it takes from whatever it is right now, which could be upwards of three years, down to six months.

Henry Darwin, the EPA’s chief of operations, discusses the agency’s lean management system at the announcement of the Office of Continuous Improvement on May 14. (Photo courtesy of EPA)

Bluey: In an interview with The Daily Signal, Administrator Pruitt spoke about what you’re doing as the Darwin Effect, named after you. How did you come to embrace these management principles in your line of work?

Darwin: I’m a lifelong environmental professional. I have 18 years of experience working for a state environmental agency. I became the director of that state environmental agency in Arizona about seven years ago and was the director there for five years. Over the course of my experience there, I found an appreciation for lean and a system that could support lean efforts.

We were able to, in my agency, reduce permitting timeframes on the order of 70 percent, 80 percent, and in some instances, 90 percent using lean principles and as supported by a lean management system. I, after that experience, was asked by the governor of Arizona, Gov. Doug Ducey, to do the same lean management system deployment for the entire state.

Over the course of two years, I was in the process of deploying a lean management system in 35 state agencies with 35,000 employees and we were seeing the same types of results. They continue to see those same types of results in Arizona using the same business processes and principles.

Bluey: Like Administrator Pruitt, who was prior to his appointment the attorney general of Oklahoma, you come from state government as well. How would you say that experience, both working in the environmental field and then working as Arizona’s chief of operations, prepared you for the job that you’re doing today?

Darwin: I hope that it did prepare me. But there are some significant differences between state government and the federal government. The federal government, rightly or wrongly so, is a much bigger bureaucracy. So the efforts that we had been undertaking at the state level, although not impossible, is actually more difficult now that we’re here doing this work at the federal level. But with that said, it’s more rewarding.

The zone of influence, or the impact that we are making here, it’s to the benefit of not just a single state but the entire country. So even though it may be more difficult, it’s more rewarding. And I can’t think of a better place to be right now.

Bluey: Can you talk about the reaction to the Office of Continuous Improvement within the agency? And also the lean management system.

Darwin: I’m very fortunate in the fact that before I arrived there was a pretty strong appreciation for what lean could be. With that said, EPA had not found a way of making lean all it could be.

I received a lot of support internally for this idea of bringing a system to EPA that could be used to realize, and bring to life, a lot of those improvement ideas that had been identified under previous administrations.

This is as much about carrying forward the work that had been done previously and bringing discipline to actually executing on the plans and the improvements that had been identified but not necessarily followed through on from previous administrations. It has received a lot of positive feedback, a lot of energy and positive energy around the work that we’re here to do.

Bluey: Who are you going to have directing the new office?

Darwin: The director of the Office of Continuous Improvement is a woman named Serena McIlwain. She comes most recently from a region in San Francisco, Region 9. She has a lot of experience, not only at EPA but also in the federal government. So she can help me navigate some of those bureaucracies.

She was the person at EPA who was probably the biggest proponent of lean. She was actually teaching lean tools and principles from Region 9 to the entire agency. She’s been a fantastic fit so far and I know that she’s going to do a great job.

Serena McIlwain, the EPA’s director of the Office of Continuous Improvement, explains her new role. (Photo courtesy of EPA)

Bluey: As a conservative, I have to ask this because any time government is creating a new office, you might have Americans out there who are skeptical and believe in smaller government. What’s your message to those who say, “How is this going to improve performance and not create more bureaucracy?”

Darwin: As a conservative myself, I would share those concerns or sentiments. What I will say is that even though this is a new office, this is not new employees.

We have not grown the size of the EPA. Those who are performing this work were already EPA employees. We have pulled these staff members and managers from within the agency, so we’re just redirecting them to what I believe to be higher value or more value-added work.

Instead of focusing their efforts on performing lean projects that had questionable or limited results, we’re focusing them on areas where we actually will see results. So they’re actually providing higher value, not only to the EPA but our taxpayer investors.

Bluey: And finally—I’ve posed this question to Administrator Pruitt as well—how do you ensure that the changes you’re making at EPA today last many, many years into the future?

Darwin: A lot of it is institutionalizing the work that I’m doing. And not to get too technical, but there are methods and means by which we can institutionalize the work.

It’s really connected back to your question about pulling people from within the agency. We’re not bringing in a bunch of new people, we’re not bringing in a bunch of consultants to do this work. We’re trying to learn from within EPA. We’re trying to use career staff that have a lot of experience at EPA and have a lot of influence at EPA in order to manage the office, in order to lead the office, but also to staff the office.

Because we want them to believe in the new system, we want them to carry this forward beyond our existence here.

Bluey: Henry, thanks so much for taking the time to speak to The Daily Signal.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2018/05/...e-efficiently/
]]>The Heritage Foundation@Heritagehttp://www.szone.us/showthread.php?t=150783Why China Represents Such a Global Threathttp://www.szone.us/showthread.php?t=150782&goto=newpost
Tue, 22 May 2018 03:24:44 GMTOn 05.21.18 01:25 PM posted by Bill Walton
Just this year, the Chinese Communist Party held an election in the Great Hall of the People where Xi Jinping was voted “president for life.” The vote was 2,958 for and six against.
With this vote they proclaimed that China is now realizing its dream of national rejuvenation, and its grand strategy to restore its empire.
This move only adds to mounting evidence of Chinese economic and military ambitions that we’ve been learning about from Cambridge University professor Stefan Halper and Pat Mulloy, a longtime member of the bipartisan China Commission.
**The New Emperor *On 05.21.18 01:25 PM posted by Bill Walton

Just this year, the Chinese Communist Party held an election in the Great Hall of the People where Xi Jinping was voted “president for life.” The vote was 2,958 for and six against.

With this vote they proclaimed that China is now realizing its dream of national rejuvenation, and its grand strategy to restore its empire.

This move only adds to mounting evidence of Chinese economic and military ambitions that we’ve been learning about from Cambridge University professor Stefan Halper and Pat Mulloy, a longtime member of the bipartisan China Commission.

*The New Emperor

“There’s no opposition in communist China, that’s the first thing to understand. They can call it an election, but in effect it’s a coronation,” said Halper.

“And if you’re Chinese, and you’re in opposition, don’t you get swept up into Xi’s ‘anti-corruption’ regime?” I asked.

“Yes, that’s the best net he has. He’s arrested about 182,000 people, that’s a lot of people, and they’re frightened to death,” he said.

Mulloy explains, “We’re going back into a period that the Chinese were very afraid of getting into again, of having a permanent emperor ruler. I think this has really caught the attention of many in the West who thought China was not going back on this kind of road,” and that the Chinese explicitly moved away from having rulers for life following the brutalities of Mao Zedong’s rule.

Increased Repression

And just like Mao, Xi’s rule looks to be about accumulating power rather than making life better for his own people. In fact, the Chinese are ramping up East German-style surveillance of the public through “social credit scores.”

“In Beijing alone there are over 40,000 internet policemen, people who track the internet, what people are doing and saying,” said Halper.

“People now have cameras in their home, and of course on the streets, and they’re monitored 24/7. And if you have an infraction, like you’ve been crossing the street in the wrong place or against the light, that’s noted,” said Halper. “And if you get enough of these infractions, you begin to lose certain privileges and freedoms.”

“It’s 1984 writ large.”

Giant Economic Ambitions

While repressing its own people, China is busy using the money the United States pumps into its economy through a lopsided trade relationship to build its influence throughout the region and the world.

A major part of that endeavor is the One Belt, One Road policy, a project Halper calls “50 times the size of the Marshall Plan,” which was the U.S.-led rebuilding of Europe following World War II.

“One Belt, One Road is a concept that Xi Jinping advanced that would link China with India, the Near East, South Asia, Europe, and it would facilitate the movement of Chinese exports by road and rail all the way into Europe. It involves the construction of roads and bridges and railroads in order to move all of these exports, and it requires China to effect relationships with businesses across the Near East and South Asia,” said Halper.

China’s aggression leaves businesses and other nations feeling greater unease, but Beijing’s power and money leaves them with few practical options.

“So this lopsided economic relationship that we have with China is permitting them to expand their political influence through projects like this, and their economic influence, but also permitting them to strengthen themselves militarily,” said Mulloy. “Because when you transfer technology and industrial capacity to your opponent at your own expense, they can then pump money into their military capabilities, and they’ve been doing just that.”

Territorial Aggression and Trampling International Law

On the seas, China is pursuing the Maritime Silk Road, which seeks to connect ports—known as its “string of pearls”—throughout Asia and beyond in an effort to build autonomy for Chinese commerce.

But Chinese aggression on the seas goes much further, including the claiming of 100,000 square miles of the South China Sea and beyond. The United Nations ruled against China’s territorial claims, but those verdicts have been brazenly ignored.

“It is one of the most outrageous and egregious violations of international law and precedent that any of us have seen in a long while,” said Halper.

The Chinese say scraps of ancient pottery have been found in these places, proving they have a historical claim to those lands.

“If that were true, then the United States could claim the Gulf of Mexico, the French would own the Atlantic Ocean,” added Halper.

The Wake-Up Call

The U.S. and the rest of the world have been either asleep at the switch or happily complicit in the rise of Chinese power over the past 40 years.

Through rose-colored glasses, we believed that if we let China into the world trade system they’d become more liberal, democratic—more like us. We also believed that the internet was going to make China more liberal and open.

These things haven’t happened.

Instead, China now has a new emperor who is bent on becoming the dominant power on the world stage and is perfectly comfortable trampling the rights of nations and his own people.

And with Xi’s seizing of power for life, many serious leaders in the world are starting to pay serious attention to the growing behemoth it has failed to recognize and confront.

Note the word serious.

In America, the word serious doesn’t even begin to describe our media and political class. Instead, they rage on about a bankrupt Russia’s feeble attempt at election meddling—and Stormy Daniels. It would be funny if it weren’t so dangerous.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2018/05/...global-threat/
]]>The Heritage Foundation@Heritagehttp://www.szone.us/showthread.php?t=150782In These Countries, Freedom to Choose What to Believe Is Under Threathttp://www.szone.us/showthread.php?t=150781&goto=newpost
Tue, 22 May 2018 03:24:44 GMTOn 05.21.18 01:44 PM posted by Megan Fischer
For most people in the West, the decision to adopt a new faith is a serious one, made after thorough investigation of the truth claims of various religions. That weighty decision is also a free one.
Yet for many people around the world, that basic freedom is lacking. Too often, governments impose obstacles to block citizens from converting to another religion.
At a recent policy event on Capitol Hill, Balakrishnan Baskaran, who serves as a legal consultant to ADF International, shared about the obstacles faced by religious minorities in his native India. His family converted to Christianity from Hinduism. Such a decision would become illegal if the Hindu nationalist BJP party has its way.
Eight states in India already have anti-conversion laws in effect, including two states that adopted them in the past year. Laughably called “Freedom of Religion” acts, these laws aim to prevent Hindus from converting to Christianity or...On 05.21.18 01:44 PM posted by Megan Fischer

For most people in the West, the decision to adopt a new faith is a serious one, made after thorough investigation of the truth claims of various religions. That weighty decision is also a free one.

Yet for many people around the world, that basic freedom is lacking. Too often, governments impose obstacles to block citizens from converting to another religion.

At a recent policy event on Capitol Hill, Balakrishnan Baskaran, who serves as a legal consultant to ADF International, shared about the obstacles faced by religious minorities in his native India. His family converted to Christianity from Hinduism. Such a decision would become illegal if the Hindu nationalist BJP party has its way.

Eight states in India already have anti-conversion laws in effect, including two states that adopted them in the past year. Laughably called “Freedom of Religion” acts, these laws aim to prevent Hindus from converting to Christianity or Islam. They purport to prohibit conversions that are based on force, fraud, or inducement, but these terms are vague. These laws essentially ban conversion whenever local authorities object.

Some laws require potential converts to notify local government officials, while others even mandate advance permission, which often is not granted. This violates a fundamental principle of international human rights—that a person may believe whatever he or she chooses to believe, and that no one may force him or her to adopt or renounce a particular belief.

Members of the lowest castes who convert away from Hinduism lose certain government benefits—an obvious attempt to keep them in their place. Conversely and unsurprisingly, if someone wants to convert to Hinduism, the majority religion, there are no hurdles. Mass Hindu conversion ceremonies take place with no consequences, even though some participants claim they are forced to take part.

Recent arrests include 32 Catholic seminarians singing Christmas carols, chaperones for a Christian summer camp, and a Christian handing out pamphlets. Extremists attack Christians as they worship in their churches and homes under the pretense of preventing fraudulent conversions. Lawyers like Baskaran represent Christians who have been attacked, but it can take years for victims to receive reparations, if they receive any at all.

As religious nationalism grows in the region, other countries have passed similar laws. In August 2017, Nepal criminalized religious conversions, bolstering a pre-existing constitutional provision. Myanmar passed an anti-conversion law in 2015 as part of a package of laws targeting minorities, especially the Muslim Rohingya. Bhutan’s penal code has banned conversions since 2011. Nepal is a majority-Hindu country. Myanmar and Bhutan are Buddhist.

The United Nations has failed to protect religious minorities in these countries, despite its creation as the primary champion of international human rights. Major human rights violators continue to be allowed on the U.N.’s Human Rights Council, including Afghanistan, China, Cuba, Egypt, Pakistan, and Venezuela. India was on the council until last year.

The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, which bills itself as the center of the U.N.’s human rights efforts, is too busy with its campaigns on so-called sexual and reproductive rights to focus on religious freedom.

A few countries have condemned anti-conversion laws through the Universal Periodic Review, a mechanism by which member states can make recommendations to other member states, but countries under review simply “note”—reject, in U.N. parlance—the recommendations they do not like, and that is that.

To effect change, states must demand accountability from U.N. entities charged with protecting and promoting human rights, including threatening to withhold funds from the U.N. until it prioritizes religious freedom and accordingly condemns anti-conversion laws.

Otherwise, the U.N. will continue to fail religious minorities in India, Nepal, Myanmar, and Bhutan, who will have no real freedom to believe what they choose to believe.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2018/05/...-under-threat/
]]>The Heritage Foundation@Heritagehttp://www.szone.us/showthread.php?t=150781Only in America’s Schools Could ‘Partying Like It’s 1776’ Be Offensivehttp://www.szone.us/showthread.php?t=150780&goto=newpost
Tue, 22 May 2018 03:24:44 GMTOn 05.21.18 02:21 PM posted by Jarrett Stepman
At the rate we are going, saying “good morning” might become offensive.
The principal of Cherry Hill High School East in New Jersey issued an apology after some students deemed the public school’s prom theme, “Party Like It’s 1776,” to be insensitive.
“I am writing to apologize for the hurt feelings this reference caused for members of our school family,” Dennis Perry wrote Friday in a letter, according (https://www.courierpostonline.com/story/news/local/south-jersey/2018/05/19/cherry-hill-east-principal-apologizes-prom-tickets/626533002/) to the Cherry Hill Courier Post.
“I especially apologize to our African American students, who I have let down by not initially recognizing the inappropriateness of this wording,” he said.On 05.21.18 02:21 PM posted by Jarrett Stepman

At the rate we are going, saying “good morning” might become offensive.

The principal of Cherry Hill High School East in New Jersey issued an apology after some students deemed the public school’s prom theme, “Party Like It’s 1776,” to be insensitive.

“I am writing to apologize for the hurt feelings this reference caused for members of our school family,” Dennis Perry wrote Friday in a letter, according to the Cherry Hill Courier Post.

“I especially apologize to our African American students, who I have let down by not initially recognizing the inappropriateness of this wording,” he said.

The principal announced that tickets would not be needed to get into the prom, a name would suffice, the tickets would be redesigned, and “safeguards” would be laid down in the future to make sure nobody is offended by anything the school does.

What is especially ridiculous about this whole situation is that the school is hosting the prom at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, a building that pays tribute to the nation’s founding documents.

Every American, of any background, has a good reason to celebrate 1776.

While it is true that the promise of freedom imbued in the Declaration of Independence wasn’t extended to everyone initially, it nevertheless set the stage for an advancement of liberty in the future.

Nobody has better explained this than Frederick Douglass, a black man who had been a slave before freeing himself and becoming one of America’s leading abolitionists.

Slavery, at that time, was still practiced widely across the country. But as much as Douglass loathed this institution and railed against the hypocrisy of rallying around a creed that says “all men are created equal” while leaving other Americans in oppressive bondage, he did not turn on the ideal of 1776 or the forces unleashed at that moment.

Far from it.

“The Fourth of July is the first great fact in your nation’s history—the very ringbolt in the chain of your yet undeveloped destiny,” Douglass said to his audience, adding:

Pride and patriotism, not less than gratitude, prompt you to celebrate and to hold it in perpetual remembrance. I have said that the Declaration of Independence is the ringbolt to the chain of your nation’s destiny; so, indeed, I regard it. The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost.

Douglass then turned and criticized Americans for not making the universal truths of the founding documents truly universal. He reminded them that it was hard to celebrate liberty when so many remained in abject slavery.

Importantly, Douglass didn’t tell his audience to reject the American founding, to reject Independence Day. He told them all to embrace it and create a new birth of freedom, as Abraham Lincoln would later call it in the Gettysburg Address.

An America that no longer can celebrate or recognize this triumph is hardly a nation at all. It is an America where the most fundamental chords of what we are have been severed, and our future is made gloomy by a lack of any discernible connective tissues besides the old fallbacks of race and tribe.

This would be a terrible fate for our experiment in liberty, now over two centuries old.

Peter C. Myers, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin and expert in American political thought,*wrote in a paper for The Heritage Foundation that Douglass embraced America’s founding even as its promise still had not entirely reached people like him.

“The principles of natural human rights set forth in the Declaration of Independence, Douglass was convinced, represent a permanent, universal truth as well as the most practically powerful moral and political theory ever conceived,” Meyers wrote. “It was above all in America’s original and unforgettable dedication to those principles that Douglass found reason to love and identify with his country, despite the injustices that he and his people had suffered.”

1776 was a universal triumph, the essential first step to abolishing slavery in just four score and seven years.

If a man like Douglass, who had as good a right as any to reject America, instead fully embraced what it stood for, then surely we today can universally champion its creation.

There is nothing unusual about America being divided, as it often is today. The framers of our Constitution designed our institutions to create an acceptable consensus out of disagreement, while protecting our fundamental liberties from the whims of mobs and tyrants.

However, the one thing that we must adhere to as a nation is the foundational creed that derives from the Declaration of Independence and the republican institutions that the Founding Fathers gave us.

If even these cornerstone ideas can’t be shared by everyone, then we flirt with the kind of fracture that occurred in our great Civil War, in which the most fundamental elements of what we are were questioned and attacked.

It is sad and disturbing to think that modern Americans today cannot unite behind something as universal as the Spirit of ’76.

Episodes like these are making many Americans lose faith in their public schools, and demonstrate why the issue of school choice is so essential.

Education goes beyond test scores and angling to get into competitive colleges. It’s about preparing young people to live as free citizens in a constitutional republic.

If our schools are failing to do that, parents need the tools to pressure them to do a better job of teaching them American values and American history. At the very least, we must give parents the option to put their children in a school that will.

Americans face dire consequences if we allow this system of public education to go unfixed.

John Adams once said that Independence Day would be celebrated as one of the most important in history (though the nation’s second president mistakenly thought it would be celebrated July 2).

“I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding generations, as the great anniversary festival,” Adams wrote in a letter to his wife,*Abigail, adding:

It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shews, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations from one end of this continent to the other from this time forward forever more.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2018/05/...-be-offensive/
]]>The Heritage Foundation@Heritagehttp://www.szone.us/showthread.php?t=150780Media Coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian Clash Is Built on a Mythhttp://www.szone.us/showthread.php?t=150786&goto=newpost
Tue, 22 May 2018 03:24:44 GMTOn 05.21.18 12:19 PM posted by David Harsanyi

No matter how often Hamas tells us that rioters on the Israel-Gaza border are armed, the media keeps referring to them as “protesters” and “demonstrators.”

No matter how often Hamas concedes that those rioters are part of a broader “war,” the media simply won’t report it as such. And even though rioters assure reporters they have a desire to kill and burn Jews, left-wing journalists and pundits continue to frame Israel as the aggressor.

Last week, a senior Hamas official bragged that 50 of the nearly 60 people killed by the Israeli Defense Forces at the Israel-Gaza border were members of Hamas. Israel has identified around 24 of those killed during the riots as Hamas members—10 of them reportedly members of the internal security apparatus. All of this is an amazing coincidence considering how the clashes have been portraying as a massacre of innocent civilians and children.

Hamas, of course, has no problem boasting about these deaths, but it’s the goal. If you’re going to embed armed terrorists in a ginned-up mob that has been propagandized, paid, coerced, and then sent toward military installations and civilian centers across the border, you are counting on causalities. Because martyrdom is the point.

Instead of taking them at their word, Hamas apologists continue arguing that Gaza is an open-air prison. This is only true if you consider people who lock themselves up as prisoners.

The controlling government, which took power through a violent coup against “moderates” after the Israelis gave Gaza autonomy, won’t accept any international laws or any set of rules that would allow peaceful interaction with its neighbors. Hamas runs a proto-terror state. And Iran, a fully formed terror state, has continued to send arms to the military wing of Hamas.

Now, it’s true that this entity isn’t nearly as powerful or as advanced as its neighbors, economically or morally. But al-Qaeda and ISIS and the Taliban are not as sophisticated as the United States. No one would frame those groups as victims. The idea that Israel, and Israel alone, should afford its enemies free reign over an adjacent territory does not comport with the practices or ideals of any other free nation in the world.

And although it’s rarely mentioned, Egypt has also had the border it shares with the Palestinians closed for the better part of a decade, not only because Hamas is funded by its enemy Iran, but also because Hamas is aligned with numerous other groups that embrace violent theocratic methods to further its cause.

And despite what you may have heard, the United States Embassy being moved to the western part of Jerusalem is not the cause of the unrest. Hamas itself didn’t recognize the American Embassy in Tel Aviv, or anywhere else. It doesn’t recognize Israeli sovereignty over any territory. It is not alone.

The precursor to Fatah, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, was formed before the 1967 unification of the Jewish capital. Since then there has not been a single Palestinian leader who has conceded that Israel should have sovereignty over any part of Jerusalem.

Then again, Palestinians have never defaulted to moderation on the status of Jerusalem or anything else. Their far-flung fantasies regarding the right to return (hitched to the historical myth of Nakba) consume them. This is what stands in the way of an agreement.

Fatah, the moderate Holocaust-denying wing of Palestinian governance, still runs a martyr fund that pays cash stipends to the families of those killed or imprisoned for carrying out terrorist attacks against Jews. Thanks to the help of international aid, it has been able to make those payments increasingly generous.

Now imagine what the extremist wing of that movement looks like. These riots are not driven by economic destitution but rather the frustration of Hamas, whose attempts at suicide bombing have been thwarted and whose attempts to fire missiles into Israel have been stymied by the Iron Dome defense system.

If this were about food and shelter, the Palestinian rioters would be headed to the government building in Gaza City rather than turning away Israeli trucks bringing them humanitarian aid. At this point, everyone knows that Israel has repeatedly shown a willingness to make peace with anyone who desires it.

The fact that those of Hamas are willing to sacrifice their lives (and the lives of their citizens) doesn’t suggest they aren’t the instigators or the guilty party.

There’s an obsession in the media with the disproportionate number of Palestinians who die in these conflicts. Some can’t escape the hackneyed oppressor-oppressed news template. Others allow their obsession with Donald Trump to cloud their view of the situation—not to mention their morality.

The fact is that if Hamas were to drop its claim on Israel proper and stop using every opening provided to instigate violence, not a single Palestinian would ever have to die in this war.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2018/05/...ilt-on-a-myth/
]]>The Heritage Foundation@Heritagehttp://www.szone.us/showthread.php?t=150786Pompeo Warns Iran to Face ‘Strongest Sanctions in History’http://www.szone.us/showthread.php?t=150788&goto=newpost
Tue, 22 May 2018 03:24:44 GMTOn 05.21.18 09:23 AM posted by Fred Lucas
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gave Iran’s government an ultimatum and its people an assurance Monday in laying out the Trump administration’s agenda after pulling out of the 2015 nuclear deal with the Islamist regime.
“The Iranian wave of destruction in just the last few years is proof that Iran’s nuclear aspirations cannot be separated from the overall security picture,” @SecPompeo says.
“The sting of sanctions will be painful if the regime does not change its course from the unacceptable and unproductive path it has chosen to one that rejoins the league of nations,” Pompeo, shy of a full month on the job, said at The Heritage Foundation, warning Iran’s leaders that the “strongest sanctions in history” are coming.
“The regime has been fighting all over the Middle East for years. After our sanctions come in force, it will be battling to keep its economy alive,” said Pompeo, a former Army officer and congressman from Kansas who...On 05.21.18 09:23 AM posted by Fred Lucas

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gave Iran’s government an ultimatum and its people an assurance Monday in laying out the Trump administration’s agenda after pulling out of the 2015 nuclear deal with the Islamist regime.

“The Iranian wave of destruction in just the last few years is proof that Iran’s nuclear aspirations cannot be separated from the overall security picture,” @SecPompeo says.

“The sting of sanctions will be painful if the regime does not change its course from the unacceptable and unproductive path it has chosen to one that rejoins the league of nations,” Pompeo, shy of a full month on the job, said at The Heritage Foundation, warning Iran’s leaders that the “strongest sanctions in history” are coming.

“The regime has been fighting all over the Middle East for years. After our sanctions come in force, it will be battling to keep its economy alive,” said Pompeo, a former Army officer and congressman from Kansas who the Senate confirmed April 26 as the nation’s chief diplomat after he served more than a year as director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

“Iran will be forced to make a choice: Either fight to keep its economy off life support at home or keep squandering precious wealth on fights abroad. It won’t have the resources to do both,” Pompeo said.

The United States will work to deter Iranian aggression and to stop the regime’s funding of terrorist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah, the secretary of state said during his remarks at Heritage’s Capitol Hill headquarters.

“Iran will not have carte blanche to dominate the Middle East,” Pompeo said.

On May 8, President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the multilateral Iran nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA.

The other partners in the 2015 agreement crafted by President Barack Obama’s administration were the four other permanent members of the United Nations Security Council: Britain, France, China, and Russia. Since Germany was also part of the deal, the group of nations was known as P5+1.

Pompeo noted that Obama and his second secretary of state, John Kerry, argued in 2015 that the nuclear deal would stabilize the Middle East.

But, he said, “Iran continues to be, during the JCPOA, the world’s largest sponsor of terror.”

Since the agreement went into effect, Iran has continued funding terrorism in Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, and Afghanistan, among other areas, Pompeo said.

“The Iranian wave of destruction in just the last few years is proof that Iran’s nuclear aspirations cannot be separated from the overall security picture,” he said.

Pompeo also said the United States would “tirelessly advocate” for the Iranian people, pointing to the protest last winter:

Iranians are angry at a regime elite that commits hundreds of millions to military operations and terrorist groups abroad, while the Iranian people cry out for jobs, opportunity, and liberty. The Iranian regime’s response to the protests has only exposed that the country’s leadership is running scared. Thousands have been jailed arbitrarily, and at least dozens have been killed.

The 2015 agreement gave the Islamist regime the opportunity to “boost the economic fortunes of a struggling people,” Pompeo said.

“Instead, the government spent its new-found treasure fueling proxy wars across the Middle East and lining the pockets of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Hezbollah, and Hamas,” Pompeo said. “Iran advanced its march across the Middle East during the JCPOA.”

Under the Iran deal, the United States unfroze $150 billion in Iranian assets in 2015. The following year, the Obama administration*transported $1.7 billion in cash to Iran, describing it as a settlement over an arms control agreement. The sanctions relief allowed additional money to flow into the country.

Pompeo said the United States is open to future diplomatic and economic ties with Iran, but first said it must comply with specific demands, among them:

End proliferation of ballistic missiles and halt future launching of nuclear-capable missiles.

Release U.S. citizens and citizens of allies that Iran holds captive.

End support of terrorist groups.

Stop threatening neighbors such as Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia.

“What we are pursuing was the global consensus before the JCPOA,” Pompeo said.

The 2015 Iran nuclear deal, led by the Obama administration, lifted sanctions in exchange for Iran’s delaying development of a nuclear arsenal for 10 years.

If the Trump administration can reach a new agreement with Iran, it will include Congress, unlike what the Obama administration did, Pompeo said.

“In contrast to the previous administration, we want to include Congress as a partner in this process,” Pompeo said. “We want our efforts to have broad support with the American people and endure beyond the Trump administration. A treaty is our preferred way to go.”

During a brief question-and-answer session afterward, Heritage Foundation President Kay Coles James asked Pompeo how to avoid hurting European allies with sanctions on Iran.

“Any time sanctions are in place, countries have to give up economic activity,” he said. “So, Americans have given up economic activity now for an awfully long time.”

“I’ll concede, there are American companies who would love to do business with the Islamic Republic of Iran. There is a huge market there. It’s a big, vibrant, wonderful people. But everyone is going to have to participate in this. Every country is going to have to understand that we cannot continue to create wealth for Qasem Soleimani,” Pompeo said, referring to a dominant Iranian military leader.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2018/05/...-pompeo-warns/
]]>The Heritage Foundation@Heritagehttp://www.szone.us/showthread.php?t=150788‘Party Like It’s 1776’ Theme Too Offensive for New Jersey School Promhttp://www.szone.us/showthread.php?t=150787&goto=newpost
Tue, 22 May 2018 03:24:44 GMTOn 05.21.18 09:28 AM posted by Rob Shimshock
A New Jersey high school principal apologized Friday for a “Party Like It’s 1776” theme at prom.
Dennis Perry, principal of Cherry Hill High School East, posted on his Twitter feed an apology for the theme printed on prom tickets, calling the decision “insensitive and irresponsible,”*reported Fox News (http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/05/21/new-jersey-hs-principal-apologizes-for-party-like-its-1776-on-prom-tickets-report.html).
Image: http://dailysignal.com/wp-content/uploads/DCNF-Logo-300x100.png
“I especially apologize to our African-American students, who I have let down by not initially recognizing the inappropriateness of this wording,” Perry wrote in a statement.On 05.21.18 09:28 AM posted by Rob Shimshock

A New Jersey high school principal apologized Friday for a “Party Like It’s 1776” theme at prom.

Dennis Perry, principal of Cherry Hill High School East, posted on his Twitter feed an apology for the theme printed on prom tickets, calling the decision “insensitive and irresponsible,”*reported Fox News.

“I especially apologize to our African-American students, who I have let down by not initially recognizing the inappropriateness of this wording,” Perry wrote in a statement.

To make up for what he deemed an indiscretion, the principal said students would not need to bring their prom tickets in order to get into the event—they would instead only need to state their names to be matched up with a list of who bought tickets. Cherry Hill High School would also give every student attendee a “commemorative” ticket displaying a new design at the prom. Perry stated that a “diverse group of people” would review information distributed by the school prior to its dissemination in the future.

Lloyd Henderson, president of the Camden County NAACP East Chapter, saw the incident indicative of a school culture “where African-American students’ needs are not considered along with the rest of the school,” but mentioned that he appreciated Perry’s speedy response.

Cherry Hill High School made headlines in February when it suspended social studies teacher Timothy Locke after Locke told students to remember him if he died defending them during a school shooting.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2018/05/...y-school-prom/
]]>The Heritage Foundation@Heritagehttp://www.szone.us/showthread.php?t=150787Fact Check: Has Trump Appointed 1 in Every 8 Circuit Court Judges?http://www.szone.us/showthread.php?t=150789&goto=newpost
Tue, 22 May 2018 03:24:44 GMTOn 05.21.18 08:56 AM posted by David Sivak
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell claimed that one-eighth of all circuit court judges have been appointed by President Donald Trump.
*Verdict: True*
Of the 165 active circuit court judges, 21—or 13 percent—have been appointed by Trump.
Image: http://dailysignal.com/wp-content/uploads/DCNF-Logo-300x100.pngOn 05.21.18 08:56 AM posted by David Sivak

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell claimed that one-eighth of all circuit court judges have been appointed by President Donald Trump.

Verdict: True

Of the 165 active circuit court judges, 21—or 13 percent—have been appointed by Trump.

Fact Check:

Senate Republicans emerged from a*weekly luncheon*Tuesday to speak with reporters about their party’s recent accomplishments.

“We were all in a celebratory mood as a result of having approved the 21st circuit judge just a few moments ago. That means that one-eighth—one-eighth—of the circuit judges in America have been appointed by Donald Trump and confirmed by this Republican Senate. So we think we’re making dramatic progress,” said McConnell, R-Ky.

The Senate had confirmed a string of circuit court judges—six in a*single week.

These judges will serve*lifetime appointments*on the U.S. courts of appeals, which are divided into 13 circuits. All told, Congress has authorized*179 judgeships*over the years, of which 14 seats are vacant, according to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.

With 21 Trump nominees now*confirmed*by the Senate, one out of every eight circuit court judges has been appointed by the president.

Appeals courts possess a considerable amount of power. They can*overturn*the ruling of a district court, and while the Supreme Court has the final say, it only hears about*80 cases*a year.

The public often overlooks the mark presidents have on the judiciary. President Barack Obama appointed over*one-third*of all federal judges by the end of his presidency.

More importantly, he flipped the composition of most circuit courts. Only one out of 13 appeals courts had a majority of*Democratic-appointed judges*when Obama assumed office in 2009. That number rose to nine by the end of his second term.

Ilya Shapiro, a senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute, says that appointments under Trump haven’t been as sweeping. “So far, most of the appointments have been low-hanging fruit,” he told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

Seventy-one percent of all Trump appointments have been to circuit courts that already had a majority of Republican-appointed judges.

The composition will begin to change as the Senate considers more judges. “The 11th Circuit looks to be the one that will be the first to flip,” says Shapiro.

Although it’s early in the Trump presidency, the Senate has approved circuit judges at a record clip. It confirmed*12 judges*during Trump’s first year in office, beating a record previously held by Presidents John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon.

The Senate approved a*record low*number of district court judges, however.

Democrats have used a Senate procedure called*cloture*to delay most of the judges put forward by Trump, leading Republicans to prioritize circuit court judges instead. Under Senate rules, Democrats can force 30 hours of debate for each and every nominee. “There’s only so much floor time,” Shapiro told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

Republicans could*amend the rules*to limit debate to eight hours on most nominees and two hours for district court judges—as Democrats*temporarily did*in the 113th Congress—but it’s unlikely Republicans have the necessary votes.

The use of cloture as a delay tactic is a byproduct of how partisan politics has become. After Democrats resorted to the “nuclear option” in 2013, lowering the number of votes needed to end a filibuster, Republicans forced cloture votes*85 times*over the next 13 months.

Republicans must also consider the Senate tradition of “blue slips,” which gives a nominee’s home state senators the opportunity to raise objections. The Senate Judiciary Committee weighs heavily whether a senator disapproves, and under some chairmanships, the blue slip process can torpedo a nomination entirely.

The Senate*confirmed*a federal judge earlier this month despite objections from Democrat Tammy Baldwin, one of his home state senators. “I will not allow the blue slip to be used as a tool of obstruction,” Sen. Chuck Grassley, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, wrote in an*op-ed*shortly after the confirmation. “It is not meant to give a single senator unilateral veto power over nominees for political or ideological reasons.”

In total, Trump has appointed 39 federal judges to date, including 17 district court judges and Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch. Obama had 27 nominees approved at this point in his presidency, while President George W. Bush had 57 confirmed.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2018/05/...-court-judges/
]]>The Heritage Foundation@Heritagehttp://www.szone.us/showthread.php?t=150789Here?s What Happened After Liberal Activists Shut Down Catholic Adoption Providers inhttp://www.szone.us/showthread.php?t=150792&goto=newpost
Tue, 22 May 2018 03:24:44 GMTOn 05.21.18 05:44 AM posted by Kelsey Harkness
For the past decade, liberal activists have targeted faith-based adoption agencies if they do not assist same-sex couples who wish to adopt. Through lawsuits and legislation, these activists gave faith-based agencies an ultimatum: Comply with politically correct views on sexuality and marriage and place children with same-sex couples, or shut down.
Faced with this dilemma, Steve Roach, executive director of Catholic Charities for the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois, closed the foster care and adoption programs he ran in the state. The cost? In an interview with The Daily Signal, Roach estimates that 3,000 children were affected and thousands of* foster parents no longer will be part of the system.
Now, he advocates passage of the Child Welfare Provider Inclusion Act (https://www.dailysignal.com/2015/03/16/how-congress-can-protect-adoption-foster-care-agencies-who-want-kids-to-have-a-mom-and-dad/), federal legislation to...On 05.21.18 05:44 AM posted by Kelsey Harkness

For the past decade, liberal activists have targeted faith-based adoption agencies if they do not assist same-sex couples who wish to adopt. Through lawsuits and legislation, these activists gave faith-based agencies an ultimatum: Comply with politically correct views on sexuality and marriage and place children with same-sex couples, or shut down.

Faced with this dilemma, Steve Roach, executive director of Catholic Charities for the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois, closed the foster care and adoption programs he ran in the state. The cost? In an interview with The Daily Signal, Roach estimates that 3,000 children were affected and thousands of* foster parents no longer will be part of the system.

Now, he advocates passage of the Child Welfare Provider Inclusion Act, federal legislation to prohibit discriminating or taking other adverse action against a child welfare service provider that declines to provide, facilitate, or refer for a service that conflicts with the provider’s sincerely held religious beliefs. Learn more in the transcript of the interview, which was lightly edited for clarity.

Kelsey Harkness: Tell us what happened to your adoption and foster care program run through Catholic Charities, and how you found yourself in this situation.

Roach: In 2011, the state of Illinois passed a law which effectively ended up shutting down foster care and adoption programs for Catholic Charities and a couple of other faith-based organizations in Illinois.

We were definitely forced out of foster care and adoption. The law was called the Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Unions Act. The language in that law required that all agencies providing this service must place children in the homes of same-sex couples.

My faith and our religion believes in the definition of marriage as between a man and a woman, and we could not abide by that new state requirement. So after 50 years of providing quality foster care for children, for tens of thousands of children all across Illinois, the state said, “Well, if you do not surrender that religious belief, you will be eradicated.” And that’s what happened.

Harkness: But you do allow single mothers to adopt—can you explain why? I think some people look at that and don’t understand why you’re OK facilitating adoptions for single mothers versus facilitating adoptions for same-sex couples.

Roach: We believed that a child is raised best with a mother and a father. Married mother and father. We did provide homes with single parents as long as those parents were not cohabitating. Research shows that a lot of abuse happens in homes via the live-in paramour. So our policy was if you’re a single adult, and you qualify, we will work with you.

Harkness: What do you say to someone from the ACLU or from the other side that calls you “anti-gay?”

Roach: We just say that’s not the case. What we were was an organization that tried to provide quality foster homes for abused and neglected kids, and we did it very well. We were one of the best at it. I want to say, what’s the solution for these kids who are suffering? That’s what we need to be doing.

Harkness: Can same-sex parents still adopt children, whether faith-based agencies are a part of the system or not?

Roach: Absolutely. The [proposed] Child Welfare Provider Inclusion Act does not prevent anyone from becoming a foster or adoptive parent. In Illinois, we know all same-sex couples can be served because without Catholic Charities, they all are being served.

So with Catholic Charities in the picture, it wouldn’t change that. This [proposed] law does not prevent anyone from the opportunity to become a foster and adoptive parent.

Harkness: What were the consequences of being shut down?

Roach: Thousands of children and foster parents were forced to leave Catholic Charities and go to other agencies. I think altogether there were about 3,000 children that were disrupted, and thousands more foster parents that were no longer allowed to work with Catholic Charities.

The consequences were something that we had predicted. We were one of the most effective organizations in the state of Illinois in recruiting quality foster parents. And now, one only has to look at the headlines and see that there is a shortage of quality foster homes, not only in Illinois but across the country.

That’s only been exacerbated now in the last few years by the opioid epidemic. And so at a time where foster parents were in desperate need, you have quality organizations with a long-standing history of being able to find them being forced to the sidelines.

Harkness: Why is Catholic Charities so good at recruiting foster parents compared to your average organization?

Roach: It has a lot to do with our long history. Not only had we been providing foster care and a partnership with the state of Illinois since the early ’70s, late ’60s, but for over 100 years Catholic Charities had been finding adoptive homes, working with various Catholic orphanages.

So we have this huge, long history. It is a mission, it’s something that we hold very near and dear to our hearts. Children need homes and that’s what the church has been involved with for a long, long time. And I think that’s why we’re really, really good at what we do.

Harkness: What happens if other faith-based adoption agencies get pushed out of the system?

Roach: I think the travesty is perpetuated. The crisis will be made worse. The children are the one who’ve suffered in all this. This was clearly an argument on rights. Our side believe this was a religious liberty argument, and we will always believe that. The other side believes that this was a civil rights argument, and so we had a conflict within the public-private partnership that had worked well since the Great Depression.

And instead of resolving the conflict by putting the kids first and coming up with a solution that would help those kids, all we did was shout at each other, and that’s all they’re doing right now. You discriminate, or you’re anti-gay, or you’re anti-God, and all we do is we argue and fight.

In the meantime, you have thousands of kids who are suffering. So if this continues to happen, the number of kids suffering will only grow. We have to be adults in the room; we can’t be shouting, we’ve got to help these kids. There is a solution. The Child Welfare Provider Inclusion Act provides that solution.

The solution should do two things. One, it should ensure that anyone who wants to do this difficult work, and it is very difficult work—it’s not a right, no one has a right to become a foster parent or adoptive [parent]—anyone who wants to do this work should allow religious organizations to abide by their religious faith in providing these services. The second thing should be that the solution should be done in the best interest of kids.

This act does all of that. It takes away the argument and says we’re gonna focus on kids. So if everyone can be served who wants to be a foster parent or adoptive parent, and religious organizations can practice this service according to their faith, then everyone wins because the kids then will have the maximum opportunity to find a quality forever home. And that’s what we need to be focused on. That’s not what happened in Illinois.

Harkness: You’re now advocating to address this from the federal level. Why?

Roach: The fight that I described earlier, religious liberties versus civil rights, is happening in several other states around the country. The ACLU is continually perpetuating lawsuits to try and attempt to drive out religious organizations that have the radical belief that marriage is between a man and a woman.

Harkness: In general, how bad is the foster care and adoption crisis?

Roach: Do a simple Google search. You’ll see headline after headline after headline in states across the country where there’s a foster home shortage. Not only in Illinois but in many, many other states. I’ve read articles where they can’t find homes and so kids are staying in offices because there’s no home for them to be placed in. It has reached a crisis proportion, and it’s been exacerbated by the opioid crisis.

There have been studies that have shown that the need for foster homes has increased because there are a lot more kids now coming into care because [of] neglect, because the parents are so addicted that their addiction is their only focus. Children are being left home alone, children are being not fed, children are not going to school. And so the state is coming in and removing those children because they’re in dangerous situations. And so it has definitely grown the need.

We are in a very difficult situation right now, and these kids are suffering. We need to think about how can we, as a society, reach out to all segments of our population to find people who would provide care and homes for these children. We don’t need to be shunning people and organizations. We need to be maximizing our opportunities to find these parents.

Harkness: Where do you go from here?

Roach: One of our strengths is that we are able to provide a wide array of services. And so after this happened to us, our bishop and our board began planning to see what else we could do out there to fulfill the mission of providing mercy and love to people who are hurting.

We’ve developed other programs—legal service programs, rural outreach programs, immigration programs—since we lost foster care and adoption.

As summer approaches, the already-slow legislative production in Congress is grinding to a halt. Fewer and fewer members are willing to take a potentially controversial vote that could give opponents an opening for attack.

But there’s one legislative proposal that should cut through this gridlock and unite Republicans and Democrats: making the recently passed individual and small business tax cuts permanent.

As a result of budget gimmicks, these aspects of the tax cuts—which have the most impact on ordinary Americans—are set to*expire in 2025*absent congressional action. Leading Republicans have*recently proposed*“tax cuts 2.0” to make these cuts—and the positive effects that go along with them—permanent.

Given their impact on middle-class Americans, this proposal should generate bipartisan support. The tax cuts significantly reduce the individual income tax burden on the middle class. (Contrary to most media reports, the wealthy will actually see their share of*the*tax burden rise.)

The tax cuts doubled the standard deduction and reduced rates across the board. For instance, the 15 percent tax rate, which used to take effect at just*$19,050*of household income, has been eliminated entirely in favor of a vastly expanded 12 percent rate. The typical family of four earning $75,000 a year will take home an extra*$2,000 or so*as a result.

While Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi decries these tax savings as “crumbs,” they will provide significant relief for the*four-fifths*of Americans who live paycheck-to-paycheck.

Small businesses are also receiving long-overdue relief from the tax cuts. Under the old tax code, they faced federal marginal tax rates of 40 percent. The tax cuts create a new 20 percent small business tax deduction, which effectively lowers the top marginal rate*to 30 percent—a 25 percent cut.

With the ability to protect one-fifth of their earnings from taxes, small businesses have the funds they need to survive and thrive. Hundreds of small businesses across the country have used their savings to expand, hire, and raise wages.

In my home state of Missouri, Mid-AM Metal Forming in Rogersville, Iron Horse Energy Services in Eolia, and Dynamic Fasteners in Raytown*are just some of the examples of businesses*giving their employees significant tax cut-induced raises. Such investments would be even more pronounced if small businesses had the certainty that their tax savings would be permanent.

Small businesses and ordinary Americans have also received a secondary benefit from the tax cuts in the form of a more robust economy. The tax cuts mean that billions of dollars that otherwise would have been extracted from communities by the IRS remain at home where they can be invested and spent, creating jobs and opportunity.

As a result of this tax cut-induced economic growth, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office recently raised its economic growth forecast to*3.3 percent. This is more than double the Obama-era average. The Congressional Budget Office also predicts the tax cuts will create more than 1 million new jobs and significantly spur wage growth in the coming years.

These economic benefits are already occurring. The recently released April jobs report shows that the national unemployment rate has fallen to*3.9 percent—one of the few times in modern history it has been below 4 percent. And wages are growing at their fastest pace in a decade.

Who wouldn’t want to double down on these positive effects by making tax cuts for individuals and small businesses permanent? Congress should come together over the bipartisan cause of higher pay, more jobs, and economic growth.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2018/05/...an-no-brainer/
]]>The Heritage Foundation@Heritagehttp://www.szone.us/showthread.php?t=150791Republicans Flirt With Amnesty Yet Again, Ignoring Long-Needed Reformshttp://www.szone.us/showthread.php?t=150790&goto=newpost
Tue, 22 May 2018 03:24:44 GMTOn 05.21.18 08:28 AM posted by David Inserra
The word on the street is that House Republicans will vote on several immigration bills (https://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook/2018/05/18/house-immigration-votes-discharge-petition-271094) in June in order to stave off a discharge petition that would force a vote on amnesty.
Unfortunately, these bills are in fact amnesty bills. They would betray the conservative immigration reforms that the nation has long needed.
While many of the details are still unknown, one thing we do know is that this deal is getting worse all the time.
When members of Congress originally discussed a “DACA fix,” it was meant to protect the less than 700,000 (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-fates-of-700000-dreamers-hang-in-the-balance-this-one-should-not-be-hard-for-congress/2017/11/26/60284f62-cbd9-11e7-8321-481fd63f174d_story.html?utm_term=.2677d6ca8be9) illegal immigrants currently in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals...On 05.21.18 08:28 AM posted by David Inserra

The word on the street is that House Republicans will vote on several immigration bills in June in order to stave off a discharge petition that would force a vote on amnesty.

Unfortunately, these bills are in fact amnesty bills. They would betray the conservative immigration reforms that the nation has long needed.

While many of the details are still unknown, one thing we do know is that this deal is getting worse all the time.

When members of Congress originally discussed a “DACA fix,” it was meant to protect the less than 700,000 illegal immigrants currently in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Then, Democrats demanded 1.2 million. President Donald Trump then offered an amnesty deal to protect 1.8 million, which the Democrats rejected.

That’s the deal that is now being reconsidered, but chances are it will only get worse.

As has always been the case with amnesty legislation, amnesty is the central and first part of the deal to take effect—everything else is just grease for the wheels. Rather than actually tackling border security, improving enforcement, or closing loopholes, Congress entertains amnesty. Instead of taking a hard look at the legal immigration system and vigorously debating the many ways it can be reformed to be more merit-based, Congress will consider something worked out in a backroom deal.

Even when certain reforms have been enacted, congresses and administrations have lacked the will to enforce these new policies. Amnesty is granted first, but the other promised reforms are rarely carried out.

So the question must be asked: Why would this time be different?

The last time the U.S. tried amnesty in 1986, senators took to the floor and promised that “this is it. It is one time. You either show up on this one or you will be rejected.” These same senators promised that their comprehensive deal would stop illegal immigration.

We now know these promises were false—they never panned out. Since then, Congress has been unable to take meaningful action to stop illegal immigration. The legal immigration system was designed in 1965 and hasn’t been seriously changed since.

Yet here we are again, debating amnesty rather than the constructive policies we so badly need.

Rather than entertain amnesty, Congress should pursue better border security, adding new border barriers where needed and more technology where it is more cost-effective. Congress should end loopholes in our immigration laws and sanctuary cities that make it difficult to enforce U.S. immigration laws. It should also give immigration officials and judges more tools to catch and remove illegal immigrants.

Editor’s note: Our audience liked what it saw in The Daily Signal’s two recent interviews with HUD Secretary Ben Carson, and some of those responses provide the top to this week’s collection of comments.* Write us at letters@dailysignal.com—Ken McIntyre

In just a very short time, the president who I and many other conservative families voted for has gotten much done in our great country.

I read the news on the internet so that I can select the sources I enjoy and agree with. I’ve long ago cancelled TV, and cannot watch the mainstream media anymore.

I read that elites including George Soros want to spend $50 million to have another Russian collusion investigation. Could Genevieve Wood interview Kanye West or some members of Congress and ask them what they could do with $50 million? Kanye could use his skills to improve Chicago with that money. Look at our own homeless veterans, and so on.

Thank you for the great articles.—Laura Lepley, Pennsylvania *

***

Ben Carson says: “The goal is to get people in a positive economic status. In the past, it’s been how many people can we get in here in this program? Our goal is, how many can we get out of there with a positive outcome?”

This is the real measure of success, but as happened in the past, success is determined by the numbers in the program. The swamp loves this because they can show they are doing something.

The measure of success for welfare has to be the numbers that are taken off and working productively.—Philip Daspit, Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

I love Dr. Ben Carson. He is now getting the “baptism by fire” experience in the political arena, and hopefully for the next seven years. I still look forward to when he becomes our president.—Keith LaDue, Brandon, Miss.

***

Very good interview. I’m confident that Dr. Carson will succeed in improving HUD. I’m so glad President Trump appointed him. He is definitely up to the task.—Arelia Pendergrass

Genevieve Wood’s interview with Dr. Ben Carson was just stupendous. I learned more in 10 minutes than the “media” have (or have not) reported in a year.—Glen Hillebrand

***

Thank you for getting the only interview with Dr. Carson that I have read since the election. As a physician and supporter, I have great admiration for his position and all that he brings to the challenges of this perpetual entitlement cycle. God bless his efforts.—Dr. Paul Church

***

We have been very lucky to have a man in that job who is trying to help people to better themselves.—Russell D. Remmert, Baton Rouge, La.

***

Our dear Dr. Ben! Always up for a challenge and always using God’s wisdom to think outside the box to solve problems. He is a national treasure.

I wish we had more in office like him to drain the swamp because he knows how to handle it with intelligence and grace. He has the ability to take the sting out of speaking the truth.

And he’s highly honored as someone who, along with his wife, has fought the good fight in poor communities to inspire the young in the very best way possible. They are encouraged to reach for their full potential and live a fulfilled life.—Dahn Carey

***

Dr. Carson spoke of getting day care so young mothers could go to work or earn a GED. Actually, that is not a new concept in public housing.

In 1972, I was able to set up day care programs in each of our scattered site projects. Through a grant from HUD, I contracted with our local school system to operate the day cares while we basically furnished the space. Volunteers from our local housing developments built much of the playground equipment.

The only requirement for placing a child in day care was you must be working, looking for work, or attending classes to obtain a GED or job training. The program is still running today with the school system still operating the program and the housing authority providing space. Included in this program was a “well baby” clinic operated by the local health department. It continues today, even though the HUD grants ended in 1974.

We at the housing authority felt that outsourcing these programs rather than attempting to operate them in-house and hiring people was the best route. We were not equipped to operate the programs, and saw no reason to build an unwieldy bureaucracy.

It could be accomplished once again if Dr. Carson can eliminate the “empire builders” who seek to serve themselves rather than the people they were hired to serve.—Dallas P. Williams

***

Ben Carson’s analogy of “like drinking from a fire hydrant every day” reminds me of a similar experience with a federally funded community health center in the Midwest.

On a much smaller scale, most of us can grasp how serious was HUD not having a chief financial officer. That is almost beyond belief. Easier to talk of “accountability” as if the word has little to do with “accounting for progress to monitor and solve big and small problems” from a responsible platform of authority in planning and getting things done.

The term to derogate accountability is to call financial management a “numbers game”—the harms from this attitude translate into wastes unimaginable because they cannot be accounted for.—Felipe Galang,Chesterfield, Mo.

***

Thank you, Ben Carson, for making it possible for everyone to have the possibility of living the American dream. We are very lucky to have you fighting for a good cause. God’s blessings for you and your family always.—Carolyn M. Scotti, Rapid City, S.D.

***

Wonderful, positive interview showing common sense and what needs doing to help people to be able to help themselves. Thank you, Ben Carson.—Bonnie McGuire

Dear Daily Signal: I have nothing but compliments for Ben Carson, the subject of your *interview by Fred Lucas (“Exclusive: Ben Carson Says He’s Not ‘Going Anywhere’”). He is a gentleman and a class act. He had a great run for president and bowed out like a gentleman when it was time.

Dr. Carson graciously stepped up to help out the Trump administration, not because he needed face time and not because he is looking to enhance his political career. He is already a brilliant self-made man. He took on this challenge because he really cares about how we deal with the poor in our nation and how we trap them on the Democrat plantation.

This man is quietly making a real difference in the nation.—Glynnda White

***

Dr. Ben Carson is probably the finest gentleman ever appointed to any previous administration’s staff. He fully understands, and has firsthand experience with, the minority/racial problems facing America today.

The big “furniture” deal was a pure and simple mistake by someone on his staff, and has absolutely nothing to do with his qualifications to do his job in this “winning” administration. An administration that has the Democrats and “false news” media striking out blindly and ferociously, in every direction, at anything, everything, that this administration tries to do.—Bob Perkins,Hayesville, N.C.

***

I have all the faith in the world in Ben Carson. His entire life he has been a man of integrity and insight. I see no reason to believe Ben Carson has dramatically changed just because he is now putting his abilities to work in a high position in government. Ben Carson stands as a great model for American youth to strive to be like.—Robin Boyd

Gay rights activists are trying to delegitimize the Christian faith, and our Christian heritage as a nation, in order to justify a view of human sexuality that is unnatural, unhealthy, and immoral. It is a view that never can be accepted by those whose belief system recognizes that fact.—Randy and Peggy Malcom, Yoder, Colo.

***

This business of judging others by willingness to accept ever more insignificant differences in appearance and behavior is completely tapped out. The left needs to discover some new purpose.—Greg Brown, Bloomington, Ind.

***

As a New Jersey resident, I have witnessed the incompetence of Cory Booker as a failed mayor of Newark and now as a U.S. senator.—Bob Cottam

***

Booker is attacking those who hold a religious view differing from his. It is a constitutional right to hold any religious view we like, and our Constitution is plain that there be no religious test to hold the office of senator, congressman, or president.—Don Cauley, Wilsey, Kan.

***

Booker isn’t interested in national security, only about making a point and forcing another person to bow to his alleged ideology.—Tom Subler, Versailles, Ohio

***

Mr. Booker, you are way out of line. Your leftist views are not the same as most citizens. This is just why I am no longer a Democrat.—Sandy Paleka, Spring Grove, Ill.

Leftists and their robots in the USA already believe that words can hurt you and are well on the way to having words banned, beginning with enforcing political correctness. I believe this can be traced back to the “self-esteem” issue created by wacky psychiatrists. Another government tool to control the masses.—Patrick Tadeushuk

***

Excellent article by Amy Swearer. Sad to see Great Britain becoming not-so-great. A good cautionary tale illustrating the fallacy of the main anti-Second Amendment arguments.—Richard Pruett, Ridgway, Pa.

***

You get the government you vote in and tolerate. It’s up to the U.K. citizenry to vote out these mayors and other leaders or rebel/revolt if they’re not responsive to the will of the governed.

If these are the policies, I’m guessing the U.K. folks want them. How silly of them to be so naive. If they don’t want these policies, get out the vote.—Gregory J. Budzien, Chenequa, Wis.

***

When I first heard this news from the U.K., I told my kids: “Watch, in four or five years they’re going to try to claim coins are a dangerous projectile and attempt to ban them too in favor of paper currency.”—Anthony Politano

Dear Daily Signal: With regard to Jarrett Stepman’s commentary “The Changes That Made California Become a Liberal Fiasco,” I would like to offer the following comments: Looks like the liberals planned for our nation to experience what the Nazis had in store for Germany beginning in the early 1930s.

By this, I’m referring to “political correctness,” “thought crimes,” a single party suppressing all others, deep state politically minded thugs, anti-religious attacks, an*“ideological”*judiciary*and a “you will take this*and you will like it”*mentality. *I could go on.

I had always wondered why “Nanny” Pelosi kept using that word “Nazi” so many times in the past 10 years. *Now I know why. Someone told me years ago that a liberal will always unwittingly telegraph his subversive*thoughts.* It’s almost as if they don’t believe you are smart enough to*figure it out for yourself, or even care.

God preserve that as a people, we will continue to see liberalism for what it really is—scary stuff.—Michael R. Cartee, Marietta, Ga.

***

Liberalism has ruined Detroit, Chicago, the states of Illinois, Oregon, Washington, and California. And now with the failures they’re moving to other states and cities to work on them.

San Francisco used to be a working person’s city where families lived. Most families are long gone; proof is the attendance in the schools.

Funny how California’s wealthiest live in walled compounds and travel with armed bodyguards. Remember, those things that normal people can’t afford or legally do.—Jeff Pearson

***

I fled California years ago because Barack Obama and then Jerry Brown ruined about everything they touched. We need that wall, and we need a governor who is not so far left he can’t see the middle.

It was great at one time. I took 100 employees with me. For what they’ve done (tyranny), California deserves to be broken up and the coastal libs need to be exiled to Mexico.—Marcus David

***

I left New York for the same reasons, and am watching anxiously as the liberal governor of Virginia tries to do the same. It amazes me that the results are visible to anyone willing to open their eyes, but many are blinded by ideology, politics, and just plain old bad education. But it is nice to be able to walk away and stop my dollars from being used to fuel the insanity of liberal politics.—Larry Gniewek

****

You glossed over the hidden points that people with talent and money are flocking to California. That California has some of the strongest businesses in the nation. That California has the seventh-largest economy in the world and no other state can claim that.

There are many great states, but California is never as bad as The Daily Signal keeps predicting. I’d be shocked if The Daily Signal ever told the truth without the one-sided bias.—Edward Laurson

***

Just look at what the influx of Californians has done to Seattle and Denver. After their elected politicians and their policies turned California into the mess it is today, Californians left to escape the mess they created and the high taxes necessary to continue it.

Unfortunately, they bring with them the mindset that created the problem in the first place. They are like locusts, consuming everything in their path, then moving on to another area to do the same.—Jerry Zacny

***

The best part of a two-party or multiparty system is the gridlock. This keeps the politicians from destroying the liberties guaranteed in the Constitution. A single-party system would soon enough do away with personal liberties and create an oppressive system of government.—Jerry Box

***

Everything the left manages is eventually destroyed. *Detroit, Baltimore, New Orleans, Philadelphia, New York (city and state) are all examples of this truth. California is just the latest and greatest disaster.

Texas, Arizona, and Nevada are getting stronger as the middle class migrates from California, bringing their entrepreneurial spirit, strong work ethic, and belief in family, faith, and freedom.—Mike Briggs

“This opinion should be challenged and overturned on appeal.” https://t.co/AQ8Qopq6DA via @AmySwearer@DailySignal/ We need to quickly condemn this judge 4 ‘making law’ & take this wrong decision to a higher court. If this were 2 stand, next lib judge could ban BB guns or worse.

Dear Daily Signal: About Amy Swearer’s commentary on the AR-15 ban in Massachusetts, if you believe the Supreme Court is the final arbiter of what is lawful and constitutional, then you have believed a lie and a myth that Jefferson warned about (“Bungling Judicial Precedent, Federal Court Upholds AR-15 Ban”).

The states still retain their rights to this day to defy the federal judiciary, which has become an oligarchy. We just need strong statesmen as governors and legislators to make that stand.—Rich Seibert

***

Judge William Young says “democracy means policymakers—not courts—are best suited to regulate weapons.” With that statement, the judge demonstrates that he doesn’t even know the purpose of the judicial branch of government.—Jerome Waldemar

***

The responsibility for the Parkland, Florida, shooting lies with failure of government authorities to perform their duties. Passing more laws will not help anything; criminals do not care about laws. There are enough laws on the books; enforce these and put criminals in jail.

Get criminals out of our lives. Make prison what it should be, punishment. Prisons do not need air conditioning, color television, etc. Make prison as self-efficient as possible; it should not cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per inmate per year. Remember, these people lost their rights and privileges by violating the rights of others.

Remove judges that pass soft sentences for violent criminals, and any official who is derelict in his or her duties. If we return to the rule of law and the Constitution, and stop interpreting it to mean anything other than what is written, then a lot of our problems would not exist.

The Constitution was written in simple, plain language of the day. The Founders stated that it was written so that it did not take a lawyer or scholar to understand it.—Dave Bowden, Silver Spring, Md.

***

Judge Young also bypasses a settled Supreme Court decision from 1939, U.S. v. Miller, which held that arms in common use that also serve a military purpose and could contribute to the common defense are within the Second Amendment’s ambit.—Barry Hirsh, Miami

***

The Second Amendment is probably the amendment most infringed on by our government.—Michael Cunningham, Alvin, Texas

How Are We Doing?

Dear Daily Signal: I started reading The Daily Signal several months ago.*I’m glad that I did, because now more than ever before it is difficult to find a news source that just delivers the truth absent of any other agenda. Keep up the good work.*I really appreciate it.—William Dunker

***

Thank you for bringing ignored but important news to me daily. Your work is commendable, well-written, well-researched and informative.—Suzanne Kelly, Barnstable, Mass.

***

If Republicans do not cut back the outrageous overspending of the last omnibus budget bill, they will lose the next election.* That pork-filled bill (which has the Democrats laughing at the Republicans) will ruin the good done by the tax cuts and reforms.* Rescissions now.—Pat Ellis

***

I greatly appreciate the “non-fake” news you bring. I only wish I could print out all the articles at one time instead of one by one. It would be more like a newspaper and I could read it all later. Not important, but just a thought.—Dave Barnard, Greer, S.C.

***

I always get a great perspective on the news of the day. Thank you for your interest in America.—Ralph Andrea

https://www.dailysignal.com/2018/05/...d-gun-control/
]]>The Heritage Foundation@Heritagehttp://www.szone.us/showthread.php?t=150764Pompeo to Unveil New Iran Strategy in Heritage Foundation Speechhttp://www.szone.us/showthread.php?t=150757&goto=newpost
Sat, 19 May 2018 12:16:40 GMTOn 05.18.18 01:53 PM posted by Fred Lucas
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will present a “diplomatic road map” on Monday for pursuing a “new security architecture” for dealing with Tehran after pulling out of the multilateral Iran nuclear deal.
Pompeo will deliver remarks at The Heritage Foundation in Washington about the Trump administration’s strategy for countering not only Iran’s nuclear ambitions, but also its sponsorship of terrorism and its disruption in the Middle East.
“Our broad approach now that we’ve been emphasizing is that we need … a framework that’s going to address the totality of Iran’s threats,” Brian Hook, director of policy planning for the State Department, said on a conference call with reporters Friday.
“This involves a range of things around its nuclear program—missiles, proliferating missiles, and missile technology, its support for terrorists, and its aggressive and violent activities that fuel civil wars in Syria and Yemen,” Hook said. “And so we...On 05.18.18 01:53 PM posted by Fred Lucas

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will present a “diplomatic road map” on Monday for pursuing a “new security architecture” for dealing with Tehran after pulling out of the multilateral Iran nuclear deal.

Pompeo will deliver remarks at The Heritage Foundation in Washington about the Trump administration’s strategy for countering not only Iran’s nuclear ambitions, but also its sponsorship of terrorism and its disruption in the Middle East.

“Our broad approach now that we’ve been emphasizing is that we need … a framework that’s going to address the totality of Iran’s threats,” Brian Hook, director of policy planning for the State Department, said on a conference call with reporters Friday.

“This involves a range of things around its nuclear program—missiles, proliferating missiles, and missile technology, its support for terrorists, and its aggressive and violent activities that fuel civil wars in Syria and Yemen,” Hook said. “And so we see an opportunity to counter and address Iran’s nuclear and proliferation threats, its destabilizing activity, and to create a better nonproliferation and deterrence architecture for Iran and the region.”

The 2015 Iran nuclear deal that was led by the Obama administration lifted sanctions in exchange for Iran delaying development of a nuclear arsenal for 10 years. On May 8, President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

“In the last three years or so, the JCPOA gave a lot of people a sort of false sense of security that by addressing Iran’s nuclear program, that we were somehow then addressing the totality of Iranian threats,” Hook said. “And it’s important that we change that dynamic.”

The other partners in the Iran deal were Britain, France, Germany, China, and Russia.

In advance of the speech Monday, Pompeo spoke with the foreign ministers of Germany, France, and Britain, Hook said.

“We agree on more than we disagree, and we, as I said, have been working with the Europeans over the last week or two, and just in consultations with them, and we want to continue the momentum from our work with our European allies,” he said. “And we see this, the coming months, as an opportunity to expand our efforts and to work with a lot of countries who share the same concerns about nonproliferation, about terrorism, about stoking civil wars around the region.”

https://www.dailysignal.com/2018/05/...dation-speech/
]]>The Heritage Foundation@Heritagehttp://www.szone.us/showthread.php?t=150757New Trump Administration Move Deals Significant Blow to Planned Parenthoodhttp://www.szone.us/showthread.php?t=150756&goto=newpost
Sat, 19 May 2018 12:16:40 GMTOn 05.18.18 02:02 PM posted by Monica Burke
The Department of Health and Human Services is expected to soon file a proposal that would update regulations of the Title X Family Planning grant program—and likely deny Planned Parenthood millions of taxpayer dollars.
The proposal would require Title X grant recipients to maintain a strict physical and financial separation between their family planning programs and abortion services.
That means that if Planned Parenthood wants to continue to receive an annual $50 to $60 million in Title X funds, it would have to disentangle its abortion services from taxpayer funds first and they could no longer be housed with an abortion clinic.
This proposal would also increase transparency among grant recipients and ensure that existing regulations are duly observed.On 05.18.18 02:02 PM posted by Monica Burke

The Department of Health and Human Services is expected to soon file a proposal that would update regulations of the Title X Family Planning grant program—and likely deny Planned Parenthood millions of taxpayer dollars.

The proposal would require Title X grant recipients to maintain a strict physical and financial separation between their family planning programs and abortion services.

That means that if Planned Parenthood wants to continue to receive an annual $50 to $60 million in Title X funds, it would have to disentangle its abortion services from taxpayer funds first and they could no longer be housed with an abortion clinic.

This proposal would also increase transparency among grant recipients and ensure that existing regulations are duly observed.

Under current law and regulations, Title X grants cannot be used directly for abortion services and grant recipients are prohibited from providing abortion as a method of family planning. Requiring grant recipients to keep family planning programs and abortion-related services financially separate ensures that Title X funds are used appropriately.

Moreover, the proposal does not cut funding for family planning services. Family planning programs that do not provide or refer for abortions are free to apply for grants.

In fact, this proposed change may enable even more groups to apply for funds.

The proposal would do away with a current mandate that projects must counsel or refer for abortion—a requirement that may be a barrier of entry for groups that object to abortion on medical or moral grounds but may have otherwise applied for Title X funding.

This change would build upon a previous expansion on who can apply for Title X and what they can offer. In February 2018, the Department of Health and Human Services issued a directive known as the Federal Opportunity Announcement that encouraged natural family planning or “fertility awareness” providers to apply for family planning grants, too.

This directive would expand women’s options in health care—and call out Planned Parenthood’s bluff that it has a monopoly on women’s health care.

As for the latest proposal on separating abortion services from family planning programs, a legal challenge is likely. However, the proposed regulations are similar to Reagan-era regulations, and those were upheld by the Supreme Court in Rust v. Sullivan.

This proposal is a major victory for pro-lifers, but there is still more to be done. A recent Government Accountability Office report revealed Planned Parenthood received over $1.5 billion in taxpayer funds in the course of three years.

These shocking figures should remind Congress that it must end taxpayer funding for abortion once and for all and defund Planned Parenthood now.

Until then, Congress and the administration should continue to pursue policies like this proposed rule that ensure taxpayer dollars are not spent on abortion.

The Daily Signal’s Facebook Live show “Top 10” features the top news stories of the week—many of which went misreported by the mainstream media and some weren’t reported at all.

We cover the comments made by President Donald Trump about the MS-13 gang that were then misconstrued by the mainstream media, who framed his comments toward all immigrants.

In reality, the president referred to the gang members as “animals.” Soon after, he double downed on this sentiment.

Plus: A professor promises female students he will raise their grades in an effort to increase the number of women pursuing a degree in information science. The White House moves forward on prison reform with Jared Kushner taking the lead.

We break this down and more on this week’s episode of “Top 10.” Watch the full video above.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2018/05/...lied-about-it/
]]>The Heritage Foundation@Heritagehttp://www.szone.us/showthread.php?t=150755UN Poses Danger to Free Speech, Parents’ Rights. Here’s How Trump Administration Can http://www.szone.us/showthread.php?t=150758&goto=newpost
Sat, 19 May 2018 12:16:40 GMTOn 05.18.18 01:48 PM posted by Emilie Kao
A dangerous alliance between United Nations bureaucrats and LGBT activists poses a new danger to free speech, free exercise of religion, and parental rights—not just for Americans but for people around the world.
Under the leadership of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Ambassador Nikki Haley, the Trump administration should strengthen protections of the fundamental human rights of Americans that are guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution and international treaties.
That would mark a significant break from the approach of the Obama administration, which joined forces with a handful of Western nations, the U.N. bureaucracy, and progressive activists to push policies based on rapidly changing ideas about sexual orientation and gender identity.
They did so with zero authority: None of these concepts are contained in any of the international treaties that the U.N. is authorized to enforce.On 05.18.18 01:48 PM posted by Emilie Kao

A dangerous alliance between United Nations bureaucrats and LGBT activists poses a new danger to free speech, free exercise of religion, and parental rights—not just for Americans but for people around the world.

Under the leadership of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Ambassador Nikki Haley, the Trump administration should strengthen protections of the fundamental human rights of Americans that are guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution and international treaties.

That would mark a significant break from the approach of the Obama administration, which joined forces with a handful of Western nations, the U.N. bureaucracy, and progressive activists to push policies based on rapidly changing ideas about sexual orientation and gender identity.

They did so with zero authority: None of these concepts are contained in any of the international treaties that the U.N. is authorized to enforce.

Now these policies are threatening to cost our rights—and the U.S. could foot the bill. The U.S. is responsible for 22 percent of the United Nations’ total budget and contributed $10 billion to the U.N. in 2016 alone.

American taxpayer money should not go toward an illiberal agenda that could undermine fundamental human rights.

UN Bureaucracy Run Amok

One of the most egregious examples of bureaucratic overreach occurred in the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Rather than focus on the U.N. General Assembly’s mandate to “promote and protect” the effective enjoyment of fundamental human rights that are in the texts of treaties, this U.N. office launched the Free and Equal*campaign.

This highly visible and well-funded global campaign aims to socialize same-sex marriage, criminalize so-called “hate speech,” and normalize transgender ideology, even though these terms are not in the text of any U.N. treaties.

This campaign is not only a massive overreach by U.N. bureaucracy, but it threatens to silence public debate on controversial topics like marriage and sexuality throughout the world.

Unfortunately, this campaign is just the beginning. Charles Radcliffe, Free and Equal’s founding director, has stated that a dozen U.N. agencies have made public commitments to advance*sexual orientation and gender identity policies in individual member states and that more than 100 countries have implemented changes in their domestic laws in response to U.N. sexual orientation and gender identity recommendations.

Who pays for this bureaucratic overreach? Well, the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights provides a leadership and coordination role for these policies about sexual orientation and gender identity. Its annual budget was $201.6 million, with 40 percent of its funding from the U.N. Of course, the U.N. gets over a fifth of its budget from the United States. Now the U.S. must leverage its funding to bring an end to these drastic ideologically-driven policies.

UN Policies Threaten Religious Freedom

Activists at the U.N. are attempting to impose their ideology in subtler ways, too. The addition of the sexual orientation and gender identity categories to interpretations of the term “nondiscrimination” in U.N. treaties may seem innocuous, but it is fraught with the potential to harm fundamental rights.

In Europe and the United States, progressives have used such nondiscrimination laws to force individuals to endorse a new sexual orthodoxy, including same-sex marriage, under threat of economic punishment.

The European Court of Human Rights upheld the United Kingdom government’s terminations of civil servants and private employees for refusing to perform services for same-sex marriages.

The United States Supreme Court is currently considering the case of a Christian cake artist whom Colorado ordered to endorse same-sex marriage by designing a custom wedding cake despite his religious objections.

The U.K. Supreme Court is hearing a similar case. None of these individuals turned someone away because they identify as LGBT; rather, the conflicts were all the result of disagreement over the definition of marriage.

No state, much less the unelected U.N. bureaucracy, should compel a person who believes that marriage is between one man and one woman to endorse something they believe is untrue because of pressure from a politically powerful identity group.

European governments that are pressing for new sexual orientation and gender identity rights at the U.N. have used their domestic hate speech laws to enforce the new sexual orthodoxy. Belgium, Spain, Switzerland, and the U.K. have launched police investigations into “hate speech” based on statements made by clergy.

The Obama administration endorsed this approach by issuing a United States Agency for International Development document, “LGBT Vision for Action,” that explicitly endorsed the dangerous concept of “hate speech.”

Although 165 of 193 countries recognize only a marriage between a man and a woman and not a single U.N. treaty recognizes same-sex marriage, in 2014, then-U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon stated that the U.N. Secretariat would start recognizing same-sex marriages of U.N. employees.

Even more concerning and with implications for what constitutes “hate speech,” Ban made it clear that opposition to same-sex marriage is rooted in “homophobia.”

This is simply untrue. Reasonable people of good will have held the belief that marriage is between one man and one woman for thousands of years. There is nothing inherent to this belief that necessitates bigotry.

People should be free to hold a traditional view of marriage without punishment.

This ideology directly conflicts with the fundamental right of parents to educate their children in accordance with their religious and moral beliefs as protected by Article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

U.N. independent expert and LGBT activist Vitit Muntarbhorn has called on all states “to develop inclusive curriculums and learning materials … nurturing respect and understanding for gender diversity.”

In the U.S. and other nations, Orthodox Jews, Christians, and parents of other faiths have balked at government efforts to teach their children transgender ideology. The best science, medicine, and psychology do not support the treatment of gender dysphoria with the socialization, hormone therapies, and surgeries that the transgender community advocates.

Despite this, activists at the U.N. continue to pursue a radical agenda even at the cost of family integrity and parental rights.

In every case where sexual orientation and gender identity ideology conflicts with the established rights to freedom of religion, free speech, and parental rights, the U.N. bureaucracy treats the fundamental human right as an obstacle to the ideology rather than the other way around.

The U.N. bureaucracy has it backward. If it can downgrade one fundamental human right because of one cultural orthodoxy, what is to stop it from downgrading other rights to promote other ideologies?

American Legal Decisions Could Also Be Affected

Radical ideas, which unfortunately infect some aspects of international law, can also influence the U.S. legal system. Supreme Court Associate Justice Stephen Breyer argues that U.S. judges should cite foreign law in interpreting the U.S. Constitution.

The Trump administration should reject the U.N. and activists’ attempts to impose extremist ideology through bureaucratic overreach that will affect people all over the world.

The U.S. should lead at the U.N. by supporting the fundamental rights of all individuals that sovereign member states of the U.N. have recognized in treaties.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2018/05/...table-mr-hyde/
]]>The Heritage Foundation@Heritagehttp://www.szone.us/showthread.php?t=150762Remembering Richard Pipes, a Cold Warrior Extraordinairehttp://www.szone.us/showthread.php?t=150761&goto=newpost
Sat, 19 May 2018 12:16:40 GMTOn 05.18.18 01:21 PM posted by Lee Edwards
Richard Pipes was a distinguished Russian historian, influential public intellectual, and top adviser to President Ronald Reagan who helped end the 44-year-old Cold War. He died on Thursday at the age of 94.
Born in Poland in 1923, Pipes and his Jewish parents fled to Italy in 1939 soon after German troops entered Warsaw. They reached the United States one year later, settling in upper New York state. After receiving a B.A. from Cornell University, Pipes earned a doctorate in history from Harvard University in 1950. Soon thereafter, he began teaching at Harvard, where he remained for the rest of his academic career.
Pipes was one of America’s leading experts on communism when he took a leave of absence from Harvard in 1982 to join Reagan’s National Security Council staff. He was the principal author of two key national security decision directives: NSDD-32 and NSDD-75.
NSDD-32 declared that the United States would seek to...On 05.18.18 01:21 PM posted by Lee Edwards

Richard Pipes was a distinguished Russian historian, influential public intellectual, and top adviser to President Ronald Reagan who helped end the 44-year-old Cold War. He died on Thursday at the age of 94.

Born in Poland in 1923, Pipes and his Jewish parents fled to Italy in 1939 soon after German troops entered Warsaw. They reached the United States one year later, settling in upper New York state. After receiving a B.A. from Cornell University, Pipes earned a doctorate in history from Harvard University in 1950. Soon thereafter, he began teaching at Harvard, where he remained for the rest of his academic career.

Pipes was one of America’s leading experts on communism when he took a leave of absence from Harvard in 1982 to join Reagan’s National Security Council staff. He was the principal author of two key national security decision directives: NSDD-32 and NSDD-75.

NSDD-32 declared that the United States would seek to “neutralize” Soviet control over Eastern Europe and authorized the use of covert action and other means to support anti-Soviet groups in the region, especially the Solidarity trade union in Poland. NSDD-75 called for the United States to seek not coexistence with the Soviet Union, but a fundamental change of the system.

Both directives became essential parts of the Reagan Doctrine, a multi-faceted foreign policy that included a substantial increase in pro-freedom public diplomacy, a drive to hurt the Soviet economy by reducing the price of oil, and U.S. support of anti-communist forces in Afghanistan and Nicaragua.

Pipes was the author of such ground-breaking books as “The Russian Revolution” (1990), which presented the Bolshevik Party as it truly was: a ruthless political faction, not the head of a popular movement. The book laid out how Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin founded a terrorist state that his successor, Josef Stalin perfected.

In this, he broke with more liberal interpretations that often sympathized with the Bolsheviks. He wrote that he considered it his duty to “spread a moral message by showing, using examples from history, how evil ideas lead to evil consequences.”

Pipes also played a key role in shaping public policy in 1976 when he led a group of military and foreign policy experts, known as “Team B,” in an analysis of Soviet military strategy and foreign policy. The team called for a more aggressive policy toward the Soviet Union and a turning away from a policy of accommodation, which had been recommended by “Team A,” the CIA’s own experts. Team B’s analysis paved the way for the offensive strategy of the Reagan Doctrine, which brought the Cold War to a close.

Known for his sweeping yet minutely detailed histories—“The Russian Revolution” is 842 pages long—Pipes could be concise when he needed to be.

In the Hoover Institution’s “The Collapse of Communism” (2000), he explained that the “incidental causes” of the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 were the invasion of Afghanistan, the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, and the vacillating personality of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

He also noted more profound causes like economic stagnation, the rising aspirations of Soviet minorities, and intellectual dissent within the Soviet Union. But the “decisive catalyst” of the Soviet collapse, he said, was the utopian and coercive nature of communism and its objectives.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, wrote The New York Times, Pipes emerged as an esteemed Western historian in Russia—a novel change of circumstances for someone “who had been reviled by Soviet historians throughout his career.”

In the United States, the left had long denounced the Harvard historian. “Those who called me a cold warrior,” he wrote in his memoir “Vixi: Memoirs of a Non-Belonger” (2003), “apparently expected me to cringe. In fact, I accepted the title proudly.”

In writing history, Pipes argued, “fundamental philosophical and moral questions can never end. For the dispute is not only over what has happened in the past but also what may happen in the future.”

Throughout his life, Pipes asked fundamental questions about U.S. foreign policy. He not only wrote history, but helped to make it, and in so doing helped to end America’s longest conflict—the Cold War.